From Thunder to Leaf
by Raofee
Summary: After 13 years, an Uchiha long resumed dead returns to Konoha as an ambassador from Cloud! What happens when the irresponsible, crossdressing ANBU captain makes acquintance with our favorite shinobis?
1. prologue

Raofee here!

This is my first fanfic, so please nice.

I know that a looooooooot of another-Uchiha-heir stories have already been done, but please give this one a chance!

And no, this isn't going to turn into some kind of Mary Sue fic. It certainly won't. And don't worry, our dear Naruto characters will appear next chapter! Whop-dee-du!

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Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, although that would make me happy enough to die. Kishimoto rocks! 

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_Thirteen years ago, Konoha_

Fire blazed on the west side of an Uchiha mansion.

One shadow darted out of the second floor window, followed by another, three others.

The ANBU arrived just moments later, but the intruders had already left.

A simple plan…steal into the house, which was located so far away from the rest of the Uchiha families, while the husband was away on a mission. The wife, not a kunoichi, died the second a kunai plunged into her heart.

A newborn baby, not even a week old, taken away. Another baby's corpse was forced into the lifeless arms of the mother.

Immediately the house was set on fire, and three units, as distraction, escaped.

All this was done within forty seconds.

Kumogakure might receive a warning, or a demand for retribution. That particular branch of the Uchiha family had never been outstanding or important in anyway. The girl child merely had the potential to become a nuisance to the family. But the sharingan would be Cloud's.

Konoha would think one of its newest Uchiha's dead.

She wasn't.

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A man sped through the woods, tapping on the branches, taking off, scanning the area around him while his ears strained for any unusual noises. Behind him five boys jumped from tree to tree quickly, but they were falling behind.

"Shingen-sama!"

"Shishou!"

Shingen Kaisho ignored the shouts as he continued on. During his youth, if you fell behind then you were dead. If you were stupid enough to shout a kunai or a shuriken always found you. War looked out for you. It watched you and killed you.

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At midnight he finally halted in a denser part of the forest, where the trees hung over the earth like great fingers and blocked out the stars. Tou attempted to tease out a small flame, frowning in concentration. A spark glinted against his headband. The symbol of Kumogakure shone, and the dash through it almost seemed to stretch in the dancing shadows.

All six wore headbands. All six were Kumogakure missing nins.

"Be more serious tomorrow," Shingen told the five as they gathered before the fire, "you could have exposed us already with all the ruckus back there. Remember what our goal is."

"Hai, Shingen-sama!"

In a way, they were the hunters of shinobis.

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Midnight drew on to midmorning. By noon the group of six reached the borders of the Thunder Country, where a series of misty mountains peaked into the horizon. They waited.

Reibane had been the first to spot the Kumogakure ANBU, but Shingen felt their chakra first. As one they anticipated the oncoming blood, and when the ANBU jumped right into their traps they sprang.

In such a foggy terrain where sound traveled only so far, no one heard the screams of the Kumogakure shinobis.

When the body of an infant appeared in the Raikage's office a week later, all of Cloud believed the stolen Uchiha dead.

In fact, she was not.

She had escaped death yet again…

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_Seven years ago, Thunder Country_

A revolution swept through the country. Long oppressed by tyranny, morally battered by Kumogakure shinobis' continuously weakening order, the country plummeted into anarchy as a group of missing nins calling themselves Kumorokunikunin emerged to topple the current government and its military counterpart.

Only five months later, the Raikage met a bloody assassination, and the prime minister signed an official peace treaty with the Kumorokunikunin. He was allowed to remain as prime minister, but now another controlled his movements from the shadows.

Hanashiba Ryoki ascended to the position of Raikage, and the Thunder Country entered a new era.

By this time, the missing Uchiha child had been long forgotten.

In her place was a Kumogakure jounin adopted by the late Shingen Kaisho, sensei to the Kumorokunikunin. She was soon to become the youngest, and the fakest, ANBU captain in shinobi history.

TBC.

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Ahh...and that was the prologue. This story will get better! I promise!

Another note: obviously I made up a lot of the history for Thunder Country, so don't take those information seriously.

Any questions? Suggestions? Please read and review!

Raofee


	2. Chapter 1

Yadda…after I posted the prologue, I was just too tempted to write a first chapter. So here it is! The proud chapter one of From Thunder to Leaf by Raofee!

This could be said as the background chapter. Also, as a side note, Sasuke has been retrieved and is currently spending some time recuperating. Everybody's still a genin or a chunin, and Gai's teeth still shine as bright as ever.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto….wahhhh!

**Chapter 1 Raikage's New Mission**

In the tower of the Raikage, a silver haired man sighed in defeat as he watched the young man sitting across the table tumble through confusion, recognition, disgust, and then abject horror. Admittedly, the "young man" was older than the Raikage, but Ryoki personally felt that being a Raikage subjected him to instant maturity, and so anyone who was below his rank became either a young man or an old soldier. The guy currently in the meeting room, which was occupied by only the two of them and Tou's fat cat on the windowsill, looked like an actor from some horrid noh plays.

The elder brother of the Kazekage didn't make much of an ambassador. He had scared some of the genin to kingdom come. When Tou saw the painted face and the ridiculous suit, he bluntly told Ryoki that he refused to attend the meeting – that explains why the Raikage was alone with what's-his-last-name Kankuro.

Right the moment, Kankuro tore his eyes off the portfolio opened before him. He almost screamed out. "NO!"

Instead what came through was a high-pitched, rather girly protest incorporating a couple of swear words and lots of exclamation marks.

Ryoki raised an eyebrow under the cover of his huge Raikage hat. "No?" It wasn't unexpected. In fact, it was predicted that Sand would reject this shinobi exchange. After seven years Thunder Country rolled on in top economic shape with its shinobis brought back to proper shinobi standards. After seven years, the Raikage, formerly a missing nin, attempted to establish "certain peace" with all the other countries. This new peace was not the old Raikage's simple "you don't attack me and I will try not to attack you."

Ryoki had actually tried to get close to Sunagakure by establishing trade agreements and political truce. He and Reibane had forced the Thunder Country prime minister to administer a marriage with one of the Wind Country nobles. It worked out well, but when it came to dealing with the Kazekage and the rest of the Sand shinobi population, Ryoki hit a dune and got lost in a sandstorm.

To put it nicely, the Kazekage was not a so nice person. His son, the newest Kazekage, was certainly not a whole lot easier on the ambassador issue. Sabaku no Gaara, it is said, had a reputation for killing people whenever he wanted.

Hanashiba Ryoki had a reputation for being reputable. He was a Raikage loved by the people and generally looked up to by the shinobi. Not much else could be said about him, since most of the shinobi who had witnessed him fighting generally couldn't say much afterwards. Right now, though he was ashamed of the bill sticking out from underneath a pile of paperwork consisted of profiles on various shinobi from every hidden village. He had been planning to go grocery shopping when the ambassador came in rather late. The profiles he just forgot to put away.

_Nobody said that information gathering wasn't allowed during peace-time._ He thought uncomfortably, but he still felt like a little kid who'd peeked at something he really shouldn't have…and then gone on looking.

Kankuro established a widespread reputation of himself the day he set foot in Kumogakure. If Ryoki ever needed to know where the ambassador was, he just had to stop a couple of kids and ask them where face-paint man was.

Kankuro established a reputation for himself the second he stepped into the Raikage's office. That same instant he was assaulted by traps from every side possible and found himself trapped in a genjutsu. When Tou released him from it, his puppet was gone.

Everybody knew who played the prank on Kankuro, even Kankuro.

It was just that nobody wanted to say that a thirteen-year-old girl easily beat the snot out of the Kazekage's _elder_ brother. The fact that she was the ANBU captain and was supposed to be training a few ANBUs that day didn't help the matter one bit.

Thus now Ryoki found himself sighing in defeat, and wished that he had taken Kumo's name from the list as soon as news of the prank reached his ears.

_Why can't she just leave them ALONE!_ Ryoki thought with a growing sense of doom. If the Kazekage demands punishment…Kumo would probably go to Suna and raise Hell there. _And we will have a war on our hands, and Kumo might just be _happier.

Ryoki grimaced.

"Are you sure? She is a very capable ANBU." That at least was true. "And she completes all her missions in record times…" all time slow "…and she brings back a lot of money…" robbed, maybe "…plus she is a jutsu expert."

Oh yes, Kumo was a maniac when it came to jutsu research. She could just about rival Orochimaru when it comes to creepy experiments, only people never ended up dead.

"I'm. Sure." Face-paint said in a way that hinted at a mad twitching of the corner of his mouth.

"Oh," Ryoki sighed. "Not even any of the others?"

"No."

"That's…a disappointment." Why oh why did Kumo have to spoil everything? "I hope that you have a pleasant journey back…err…and please greet the Kazekage for me."

Face-paint stared at him as though he was a walking talking teddy bear.

"Oh," Ryoki muttered again. He had been Raikage seven years and still didn't quite master the "kage" tone that most kages used to achieve respect and fear from fellow shinobis.

He blamed this on Kumo, too.

Face-paint bore a hole through Ryoki's head with his expectant gaze. Was Ryoki forgetting something?

"Ah…well, this meeting is adjourned." He added quietly under his breath, "I suppose."

Face-paint nodded, stood up, and left the room with all the dignity a face-paint guy wearing a black bear suit could muster after he'd lost his prize puppet.

A moment later he stuck his head back in and coughed, badly concealing embarrassment. "I really want Karasu back." There was just a hint of threat in his voice.

"Oh, that." Ryoki waved dismissively. "We will have it brought to you when we find it." He didn't add that when they found the puppet it'd probably be lying in pieces scattered across the woods. Kumo had a great hand for disassembling things.

As face-paint marched out of the Raikage tower, Ryoki summoned Tou and asked him to bring the genin Niburo in, who happened to be Kumo's student, and who ran to find Akai-chan who ran to find the third member of the team whose name nobody knows and who in turn found Shingen Kumo dozing in a tall tree almost tipping over the cliff of a very tall mountain, which didn't have a handy deep-watered river running beneath.

Ryoki leaned onto his hands as the black haired, black eyed, and black clothed kunoichi walked in, dripping wet.

The Raikage had forgone raising an eyebrow a long time ago.

"A cloud passed over me and rained," the kunoichi explained lazily. Her headband hung slightly slanted behind wet bangs.

Ryoki had also given up on deciphering her hopeless excuses. He got right down to business.

"So…where…ahem…did you put the Sunagakure ambassador's puppet?"

Kumo blinked. "Huh?"

Abruptly, Ryoki felt like he had just stepped on a sinkhole, and it was getting softer by the second. Very carefully, he asked again, "where is the Sunagakure ambassador's puppet? You took it this morning when you used genjutsu on him."

Kumo blinked twice. "Pardon?"

Ryoki's eyebrow twitched. "Please tell me that you haven't forgotten." The sinkhole was appallingly wide. At the bottom of it, the Kazekage's wrath waited.

"Um…I don't recall any puppets," Kumo replied, "but I had dango this morning from Chihoya's and created a new jutsu that can make a leaf float really high and far and saved a cat on a tree and accidentally pushed a genin into the lake and…"

A black wave deafened everything else. The Kazekage was not going to be happy that his ambassador, no less someone related to him, had been embarrassed in Kumogakure and lost his weapon there.

Once Kumo really forgot something, she made no effort to recall it, and it usually remained forgotten forever.

She was irresponsible like that.

_This calls for punishment_. Ryoki thought bitterly. He had been looking forward to getting rid of the number one village headache ever since he ran out of missions for her. He could give her A-ranked missions forever and she would complete them all in a week. If he gave her D-ranked missions then she was gone for two minutes and back for more. If he gave her nothing to do then she snuck around the Kumogakure advanced bloodline families and tried to steal their secrets. If he called her and reprimanded her then she did her other researches that involved things blowing up and generally useless jutsus created.

When she was six and he took over Kumogakure, he kept her busy with the prospect of working hard to becoming a jounin. She had labored intensely, and in the end Ryoki wasn't so sure if he was a better shinobi or her.

Then he tried to make her teach classes, but every day more than half of the class visited the hospital.

He tried to assign her onto jounin teams and found her completely lacking in teamwork. When he gave her a jounin class to teach, her routines were so ridiculously hard that the units filed complaints up to the Raikage's desk.

He'd given her the position of ANBU captain when she was eleven just so she would stop pestering him all day, but she made a terrible captain and so all the work ended up falling on Tou's shoulders.

Kumo was ANBU captain by name. Tou was captain in reality.

It meant that giving Kumo the job really didn't help much.

The shinobi exchange had been a perfect mission.

But…

What now?

He drummed his fingers thoughtfully. _Ah…well…there's always that._

With sudden certainty, he stood up and beckoned Kumo closer. "I've got a…" he paused deliberately, "fun…mission for you. Lots of new sights, foods…people…jutsus." He nearly grimaced at the faraway yet so at home look on her face. "And no, this isn't a spying mission. You are not allowed to maim, kill, or mentally traumatize anyone or use them in your experiments." As a bonus nudge in the right direction, he added. "And there's lots of advanced bloodlines there…you've read about the Nara and the Yamanachi, huh?"

As though in a trance, she muttered, "Konoha."

"Yes." Ryoki smiled. _Just you watch me! I will have you out of my hair by the end of today! Hurray freedom!_ "And Aburame and Inuzuka…and also the Hyuuga, the two sannin Tsunade and Jiraiya, the great copy-nin Hatake Kakashi and…" again he watched Kumo bite the bait "…the Uchiha prodigy."

That did it. Kumo's spirit positively soared. Ryoki could swear that her eyes glinted.

"A diplomatic mission to Konoha?" she guessed.

"Yes," Ryoki confirmed, still smiling. "You have my permission to stay there as long as you want, so long as you achieve what I request and don't kill, mentally traumatize, or maim any Konoha shinobi."

Kumo glanced at him, a certain suspicious glance. "Are you trying to send me away? Forever?"

Ryoki had anticipated that question with open arms. "Of course not! I'm just…letting you get acquainted with your ancestral roots. You are of the Uchiha line of Konoha, you know. Although everyone in the world except us" and he meant the former Kumorokunikunin "know that you are the…third last Uchiha."

He had seen a picture of Uchiha Sasuke and Uchiha Itachi, so had Kumo. Ryoki didn't have to think long to know that Kumo would find the resemblance amusing and awfully _inspiring_.

_It doesn't matter what pranks she cooks up_. Ryoki thought smugly. _At least I will take no part in it. _

"When do I leave?" Kumo asked.

"As soon as possible. Oh, and bring this scroll to the Hokage please." Ryoki had to kick himself mentally to remember that this was also a diplomatic attempt at peace. "I hope that you can establish a peaceful relationship between Kumogakure and Konoha. Your recent sabotage of the Sunagakure visit was very inconvenient."

He hoped that if he sent the Kazekage enough dango, he'd be forgiven.

Kumo nodded. She had been in Konoha a few times, mainly on spy missions and other dull duties of a shinobi. Up until now the Fire Country had been a banned spot on her have-time-will-travel map. She'd practically toured every corner of the world except Konoha, and that was because for one reason or another Gin wouldn't let her explore Konoha on unofficial business.

But Gin wasn't here right now.

Hanashiba Ryoki, Oyamaru Reibane, Jikiri Tou, and Kumo had decided to stay in Kumogakure after the takeover. Gin and Yodoniku Rasen had vanished to who-knows-where.

That afternoon, as the Raikage watched Kumo leave through the Kumogakure gates with a light, warm sensation in his heart. It was happiness.

And then he looked down at his desk and realized that not only did Kumo forget to take the scroll with her, she also forgot her pass to Konoha.

Moreover, she had taken the wad of bills he set aside for grocery shopping with her.

Gone also was the stack labeled _Konoha shinobi_.

Ryoki wondered, as people always said, if the Hokage was feeling a sense of impending doom.

TBC

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I hope I didn't make any grammar mistakes in there…oh dear. 

I really enjoyed typing this chapter, since creating Ryoki's character was so much fun! He is OC, by the by, and thus I hereby claim ownership over this lovable Raikage.

Next chapter: Konoha meets Uchiha. How will Kumo fare in her home village?


	3. Chapter 2

More Konoha characters, yippee!

If I misspelled or misused some of the Japanese words, please do tell. Heheh.

Thanks for reading this story and actually making it this far! It's starting to get more fun!

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, or any of the characters.

**Chapter 2 Konoha, Meet Uchiha**

_In which Naruto suffers, Gai goes missing, Tsunade gets a mole, and Jiraiya gets a peek-a-boo._

Certain signs of madness are easily observed.

As Shingen (Uchiha) Kumo stepped into the clearing, these signs were tucked quite nicely into a corner of her persona. Right now, no kunoichi walked toward the Konoha gates. There _wasn't_ a girl walking toward Konoha. After years of practice, Kumo found that when you assumed a persona and started believing it, then everybody else believed _you_.

Thus the two guards _thought_ they saw a normal, thirteen-year-old boy with tied black hair and all-black clothes and minor gold fringes. No shuriken holsters, no headband, nothing that hinted at the child being a shinobi.

With confidence that _he_ was Erimura Kansei, the civilian walked up to the guards with a bright smile that radiated innocence in overwhelming proportions. How could they not believe him?

"Name and business?" asked the man with wildly spiking hair.

"Erimura Kansei. Here to see the Hokage." The voice was a bit shaky, but some boys in puberty sounded like girls anyways. Face-paint had certainly been that.

The guy without the spiky looked up, pen raised. "To see the Hokage? Are you here to employ our shinobi?"

Grin. People skills didn't come to Kumo naturally, but she had learned. "Yes. An errand from my parents…got to have the crops harvested fast but the land is too big." Then her stomach growled on cue. "Ah! I haven't had breakfast…err…WHERE WOULD I FIND AN EATERY?"

The two shinobi blinked. With the streets near empty at 2:55 A.M., there was really no need to shout. They pointed…somewhere.

Directions was the second thing that didn't come to Kumo, and if Ryoki was here right now he'd have bet his life that Kumo would get hopelessly lost.

Ryoki would have kept his life and won another nine lives.

Half an hour later, stomach rumbling like a sick boar, Kumo trod on…fully aware of just how empty and _unfun_ the streets looked. The windows shut, the walls dusty, the city was practically dead, discounting a few shinobi patrols.

Not even a bird flied overhead. No cats darted out of alleyways. No dogs sifted through garbage cans. No assassins lurked at every corner. No thieves. No pickpockets. No fugitives. No spies. No drunks. No gullible genins. No meek chunins. No jounins running errands for the Raikage. No fun. No nothing.

It was then, looking up at the awfully dull tower with a huge "fire" character embezzled, that Kumo made a decision.

Konoha would have to be livened up.

It was improper that the hometown of such a great prankster stayed so dull during night hours. When she thought this, certain signs of madness showed through.

_And don't forget the bloodlines…_voices whispered. _Don't forget your bloodline…don't forget your cousin…_

Kumo grinned.

Uchiha.

It was a mad grin.

At the gates, the two shinobi exchanged glances. "Don't you think he looks like someone we know?" Kotetsu asked, just a _tiny_ bit worried.

Izumo hung his head. "I…think. Yes. Maybe. He really does look like someone…"

Together they wondered out loud. "But who?"

Another shinobi would have looked up when he felt the doom looming overhead, casting gloom all about the place and signaling the oncoming of many "booms". Unfortunately, this is Naruto we are talking about.

Konoha's number one loudmouth, previous number one prankster, and now the world's number one ramen fan, moved his chopsticks at a speed that only an experienced ramen eater could master and slurped and chewed and swallowed. The object of his attention, a bowl of ramen and ten more bowls coming his way, wavered uncertainly at the sense of oncoming doom.

"MORE MISO RAMEN!" Naruto shouted.

As Ayame ladled more ramen for Ichiraku's number one customer, a darkly dressed boy walked into the shop, plopped his elbows on the counter, and shouted in a painfully familiar tone (and volume), "FIVE BOWLS OF MISO RAMEN PLEASE!"

"Right away!" Ayame's father grinned, though he was just a bit perturbed by the new customer's familiarity. This was a good day for business. Not good for ears.

As the two early customers of Ichiraku each went off to their own ramen heaven, a patch of pink moved down the street, marching determinedly toward the ramen stall where the orange-clad loudmouth gulped down a whole bowl of soup without taking a breath.

Then the other customer, whose appearance still nagged the owner of Ichiraku, gagged on his ramen. "What the heck! WHAT IS THIS STUFF!"

Ayame peered over the bowl, catching a sight of the boy's utterly familiar face. "That's miso ramen, of course. Just as you ordered." She couldn't quite put her finger on whom he resembled…

"Errghh," the boy made an impish face. "I don't think…I like this stuff…very much…"

Naruto, meanwhile, was oblivious.

The pink patch continued its advance, crossing a bridge. The fists were clenched, a vein pulsing. There was the hint of not so mild irritation hanging in the air and just a whiff of sizzling temper.

Ayame continued peering at the customer. She then realized that he was eating ramen the _wrong way_, if that was even possible. _Who doesn't know how to eat ramen?_ Was what she thought. As sound waves, it came out, "Umm…I don't think you are supposed to pick the noodles up that way…uh, and you slurp and chew, not chew then slurp. That would be bad for you health…ahh…it's just noodles…"

The boy looked up with a clueless grin. "Noodles?" He paused. "Noodles! I've never had noodles in my life! Okay, so once I had soba in Iwagakure. But that was it!" He sobered up, seeming to remember a rather painful memory.

Ayame fervently hoped that it wasn't a memory of him trying to stick the soba up his nose.

"FIVE BOWLS OF BEEF RAMEN!" shouted Naruto in between slurps and chews.

Ayame wouldn't know this, but right then inspiration clicked in the very familiar boy's head. He eyed his bowl of ramen, eyed Naruto's, and inconspicuously tipped a clear liquid from a tiny vial into one bowl of uneaten ramen.

He then pushed four bowls of ramen toward Naruto. The blonde continued to stuff his face with what was in the immediately vicinity of sight.

"Ahem." The boy put on his best smile of utter innocence as the blonde turned around. "I think I called for too much ramen," he began, watching the blue eyes size up four ramen bowls greedily, "so I would like to treat you to ramen…you know, a _small_ gesture." His tone indicated that more treats would be coming if Naruto complied.

The blonde waited a moment to see if the ramen would disappear. The other boy turned around, ordered a bowl of genuine miso soup from Ayame, and seemed to forget Naruto altogether. Normal shinobi would have been wary of the offer, so Naruto dug in.

Kumo had counted on this stupidity. Although she sucked at social exchanges, her observation skills were topnotch.

Three minutes later, Kumo jumped to her feet, graced the waitress with a smile, asked Naruto to meet her in Ichiraku at noon, and took off.

No sooner did she do so than one Haruno Sakura stomp into Ichiraku, breathing fire, and slammed a fist into Naruto's unprotected head. BOOM!

The blonde clutched his head, wondering how Sakura-chan could be so angry. _Just because I pulled a tiny prank on Sasuke-teme? Ara!_

"Sa…Sakura chaaannn!"

However, Sakura's eyes swiveled and fastened onto the vanishing figure of Kumo. "That guy looks so much like Sasuke-kun…"

In the Konoha hospital, Uchiha Sasuke, still recovering from having been dragged back to the village very violently, sneezed twice.

Once Kumo found a spot to hide in the alleys, she leafed through the _Konoha shinobi_ profiles for the familiar blonde as well as a pink head. Once she found them, she scribbled notes with professional seriousness in a little black notebook.

_Uzumaki Naruto_

_Idiot. Loud. Loves ramen. Seems to go to Ichiraku a lot. _A pause. _According to analysis, might go there every meal (more observation needed). A shinobi, estimated genin level (considering observation on techniques). _Some people are full of surprises. _Grins a lot. Bribable on small matters with ramen._

Her eyes wandered to the Ichiraku stall just below.

_Haruno Sakura_

_Punches pretty strong. Is dubbed "Sakura-chan" by Naruto. Bad temper. Easily spotted in a crowd. _She watched Naruto trying to persuade pink head to have ramen. _Appears not to like ramen very much._

She shut the notebook. A few minutes ago the sun had risen completely over Konoha. It was time for more action.

Team Gai met, as they always do, before sunrise.

Not surprisingly, the first ones there were Lee and Gai, followed by Neji, who remained stoic on the outside despite a growing malice on the inside, and lastly, Tenten, who walked there, still a bit sleepy.

At seven they began warm-ups. At seven thirty Gai led the way in their laps. At nine they returned to the training field and practiced teamwork. At ten they split off to practice their individual jutsus.

At precisely eight o'clock Kumo began trailing the team of two look-alikes who weren't, as expected, father and son, and the girl with the buns and the creepy Hyuuga boy. The Hyuuga boy didn't activate his Byakugan during laps, luckily, or he would have seen Kumo observing them ten feet up and fifty feet away with a pair of binoculars.

Hyuuga…hmm. _Reibane's told me some stories about this…last ambassador Cloud ever sent to Leaf. Serves him right for being an idiot._ She thought. _What kind of bloodline researcher kidnaps people to demand bloodline secrets! The little girl was _right thereShe also remembered a rather dismal tomb at the outskirts of the village, where a Hyuuga Hiashi was buried.

Reibane had told her things about that, too. _Bloody stupid idiots. Who they got wasn't even the right Hyuuga. If they bothered to send spies over there they would've known that Hyuuga Hiashi is living very well. It's only the twin that's missing._

But apparently, so long as the tottering, mucky elders of the olden days had a body, they were satisfied.

Inspiration suddenly rammed hard into Kumo as she watched Gai and Lee.

After five minutes of "LEE! LEE! KEEP THE FLAMES OF YOUTH BURNING BRIGHTLY!" and "GAI-SENSEI! YOU ARE THE GREATEST! THE FLAMES OF YOUTH ARE YOURS!", Kumo realized one way in which Konoha would improve.

It was time that these genins spent one day without their sensei…

_And speaking of kidnappings and little girls…_

At eight forty-five Kumo sprinted off for preparations. She returned at nine with a rather devious-looking bag slung over her shoulders.

She took notes as they trained, mindful to sit like a proper civilian at a spot that happened to have a view of the training field and pretending to be writing something of too great importance to pertain to mere training.

She had also taken care to wear a disguise, knowing that the Byakugan couldn't cipher out normal disguises. Obviously the Hyuuga boy was fooled, or didn't care.

At eleven, training proceeded. Gai at last decided finally to quit cheering for Lee and endeavored to stride over to Neji.

Kumo seized this opportunity like a magpie on a gold coin. She reached into her pack, pulled out her hand, cocked her arm, and threw.

As the object sailed toward Gai, he raised one hand to block. A soft "plop" came as a Sunagakure custom-made doll dropped to the ground. Some of the fabric on its clothes bore suspicious resemblance to the bandage wrapped around Kankuro's Karasu.

"?"

Gai walked to the doll, crouched down. As the world held its breath he reached out…his fingers closed around the doll…he pulled. "A doll….?"

Inside her head Kumo cackled a thousand different maniac cackles. She pulled on the string…and Gai followed like a kid after a piece of candy.

"Neji?"

"Hai."

"Where did Gai-sensei go?" Tenten whispered. She had pulled Neji into a bush, much to the Hyuuga's annoyance. But precautions had to be taken to make sure that Lee won't throw a fit.

The Hyuuga frowned. Veins pulsed around his eyes as Byakugan activated. "I don't see him," he stated flatly.

Tenten shuddered, and she wasn't thinking of the prospect of a kidnapped Gai, although that would be just as creepy. "Oh no…"

She thought of Lee.

"Tenten," Neji said, "Gai-sensei would not leave us training without saying anything."

"Maybe the Hokage summoned him?"

"He would have informed us." The thing that made Neji uncomfortable was that he hadn't sensed Gai disappear.

"Then…"

"He – " Neji never got to finish his sentence, for that moment Lee thundered into the clearing where Neji had stood moments before Heavenly Spinning a hundred shurikens.

"NEJI! TENTEN!"

Lee was streaming tears.

Sighing, Tenten stepped out, followed by Neji, who had deactivated his Byakugan.

"GAI-SENSEI HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED!"

A piece of paper slipped from Lee's grasp and fell to the earth.

_**To the students of Maito Gai,**_

_**If you are wondering why your sensei disappeared, then yes, he has been kidnapped.**_

**_Do not attempt to alert the ANBU, no telling other genins, chunins, or jounins, or the Hokage, or any civilians, or any animals. In fact, you are not allowed to mention this except to each other, and nothing can be within earshot and…_**here it goes on to cover just about every action they could take to give a hint that Gai is missing. It also provided them with many excuses and what to do in case someone suspects, and then…

**_Failure to cooperate will result in the immediate removal of one of Gai's fingers, or yours, whichever way to prefer. _**

_**Go to Ichiraku at noon. **_

_**REMEMBER THE GUIDELINES. **_

they looked long and hard, but there was no signature

**_P.S. And remember, your sensei's fingers (or yours) and possibly more bits of anatomy are at stake. Do not disappoint me._**

Neji's face remained impassive. Lee burst into tears. Tenten blinked, pondered, and spoke out loud, "I think this is a prank."

A kunai pierced the earth a hair's width from Tenten's foot.

Neji's Byakugan rotated 359 degrees, but the perpetrator was gone.

"It…looks like a genuine kunai…that any shinobi would use…" Tenten muttered, the shock of what happened hadn't sunk in, yet.

Neji nodded. "This is serious."

He frowned. If it was someone good enough to take down Gai without so much as a sound, then it was someone good enough to kill them right where they stood, probably without much sound, either.

Kumo strode happily through the bustling streets of Konoha, dealing out Ryoki's money like cards. Her stomach was stuffed full of Leaf delicacies and her mind crammed with Hyuuga bloodline techniques.

The Uchiha houses, she decided, could be visited later.

For now she climbed onto the tallest spot in Konoha, the giant mountainside of Kage faces, and watched how the city stretched on and on. Someone had left a bucket of black paint atop the mountain.

Kumo looked at the bucket, looked down at the faces of the Kages, grinned, and performed the familiar handseal for Henge.

Some people, like Ino, for instance, spotted a big man doing something to the mountainside, but they dismissed it as a trick of light.

Later, as Umino Iruka strode down the same street that Kumo walked just ten minutes ago, he glanced up at the mountain and wondered how a big mole suddenly got onto the Hokage's face.

"Naruto?"

Sitting under the shade of a tree, Sakura and Naruto had been having a one-sided conversation on the uses of medicinal herbs. Then Naruto suddenly doubled over and threw up thirty bowls of ramen.

"NARUTO!" Sakura gripped the boy by the shoulders. She shook him out of good will. "Naruto! What's wrong!"

The boy continued to gurgle, redoubling his efforts to fold in on himself. "Naruto!"

"NaRuTo!"

"NARUTO!"

In three minutes the boy was down and out cold. Sakura sighed. "I warned him! All that ramen he eats will get to him one day!"

Happy, utterly happy, Shingen (Uchiha) Kumo walked through the city streets, through all the shops, through all the alleys, and ended up lurking outside the Konoha public bath.

_It's a place women should definitely stay away from._ Reibane had told her. Any advice that Reibane gave was good advice. So despite the fact that she hadn't had a bath ever since she left Kumogakure, Kumo stood outside.

A giggle trailed into her ears.

Kumo turned. Quietly she followed the sound of the giggles to their source – a white haired man with a big red coat squatting in front of a presumed hole in the wall that led to the woman's bath, peeking, with a notepad out and a brush in hand.

Kumo blinked. Did she look like that when she spied on secret bloodline family meetings from holes in he cupboard?

Nah. _Bloodlines and peeping toms are very different things._

Remembering something, she walked over to tap the man on the shoulders. Reibane had told her: _If you ever see a white haired pervert peeking at the woman's bath, punch him square in the eyes for me._ It had something to do with Reibane's fiancé visiting Konoha…then scared out of her wits when she saw an eye looking at her through a hole in the wall of the bath house. Something happened afterwards, Reibane didn't say what, but his fiancé ditched him (for bringing her to the bath house. She thought that the peeping tom was him).

Reibane's advice was always good advice.

Thus, as the head turned around slowly, very slowly, Kumo executed the seals for her original jutsu…waited…and punched him square in the eyes.

The man screamed.

She leapt away.

Then the women in the bath house began screaming.

To put it simply, the jutsu which she didn't bother to name allowed her to give him great pain without physically moving him anywhere. It pushed chakra past his skin and into the skull, where the nerves responded and sent signals of VERY GREAT pain through a single point in his brain.

It didn't count as killing. It certainly wasn't maiming. Kumo had great hopes that such a peeping tom would not be mentally traumatized by a little pain. And she had hit him square in the eyes, just as Reibane requested.

An hour later, an ero-sennin by the name of Jiraiya would show up in Konoha hospital with a roaring headache compounded by thrashings that ladies of the bath house kindly bestowed upon him. In the room next to him lay Naruto, tongue rolling out, face blue, gagging on Kumo's _small gesture_.

In Kumogakure, the Raikage drummed his fingers on the table and wondered how the Konoha shinobis were faring.

He smiled.

A fox's smile.

Then Tou walked into his office with a huge stack of paperwork and the fox choked.

TBC

* * *

Author's words 

I haven't much to say right now. What I can say is that I absolutely own Kumo and Ryoki and Reibane and anybody else whose name isn't in the Naruto manga or anime.

Yays for Kumo!

Her character turned out a bit different than what I was planning…and there are some paradoxes in her characteristics, so if anybody's confused about anything, just ask and I will explain.

Next Chapter: more pranks, more suffering, as the great prank and torture master Shingen (Uchiha) Kumo liven up Konoha!


	4. Chapter 3

Another chapter! Celebrate, yeah!

Oh, and thanks for the review Kira!

This story is set approximately two years after Sasuke left Konoha, so all the characters are around 14 and 15 years old, except for Kankuro, who should be 16, and the older shinobis.

Thanks for reading my story! Those of you who have made it this far receive my congratulations. Confetti!

* * *

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto…or vice versa. 

**

* * *

**

**Chapter 3 Before the Sunset**

_In which Team Gai searches, Team 10 is harassed, Iruka gets robbed, and Naruto suffers some more_

* * *

At precisely noon Team Gai arrived at Ichiraku. Neji activated his Byakugan for a sweep across the vicinity, but spotted nothing unusual. 

A rather sickly-looking Naruto dozed at his seat, nose almost dunking into a bowl of ramen. Beside him…

Neji had to blink. He wasn't normally one to blink. However, seeing the guy who chatted away with a silent Naruto squeezed just one tiny amount of shock into Neji's barrier.

"Sasuke-san!" Lee and Tenten gasped simultaneously. Who knew that Uchiha Sasuke started growing his hair long?

Naruto whirled around to take a hard look at the threesome who disturbed his meal. Sasuke followed Naruto's gaze, blinked at Team Gai, and smiled.

He _smiled._

That moment Neji perceived several differences between the guy sitting by Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke. One, Sasuke didn't smile. Two, Sasuke didn't wear black. Three, Sasuke would never, ever, forever, go around without his headband, since any action that looked like he might abandon the Leaf yet again would earn him a Rasengan in the stomach. And four, Sasuke didn't have this feminine quality to his face that the stranger had. Being a Hyuuga, Neji was naturally the only one to notice the last point.

Meanwhile, Naruto bolted up from his seat. "NEJI! THICKBROWS!" He struggled a little and finally managed, "Temari?"

Tenten twitched. "Well, I supposed it's too hard for an idiot like you to remember my name."

The stranger followed Naruto, a bit slower, and bowed. "Not the Uchiha Sasuke, I'm afraid," he spoke. "Erimura Kansei, pleased to meet you."

"Erimura-san?" Lee thought for a moment. "You are a civilian? But you look like Sasuke-san!"

Erimura nodded. "I've just arrived, actually. My parents told me to hire a few shinobi –"

"But it's just a D-rank mission!" Naruto whined.

Sympathetically, Erimura patted Naruto on the back. "Err…yes. But they said that I could stay a few days to tour the place, you know. Shinobi village. Always wanted to be in one." His eyes glazed over. "I _really_ want to see everything that the village has to offer…and Naruto has agreed to give me a quick tour around…" He then gave Team Gai another smile, which rivaled the awesomeness/attractiveness of Sasuke's enigmatic atmosphere.

Tenten momentarily forgot about Gai's kidnapping.

Unfortunately, Lee doesn't forget anything when it comes to Gai.

"Naruto-san, have you seen – "

"LEE!" Tenten hooked an arm around his throat not so lightly as Neji smoothly stepped in to block the view.

Erimura raised an eyebrow. "Are you looking for someone?"

Neji would sigh if his character allowed it. Beside Erimura, Naruto had forgotten his ramen and now gazed at Neji expectantly.

"No." His word could have frozen a lake. A very large lake. Then he turned and steered Lee and Tenten away from Ichiraku, where they could regroup…and hopefully Tenten would remember why they were at Ichiraku in the first place.

* * *

Kumo cackled madly inside. So the Byakugan had been fooled by her chakra-veil technique. _And Ryoki said all my inventions were useless!_ Puffing in triumph, she tugged on Naruto's arm. "Oy! You promised me a tour! Get on with it before the sun sets, dobe!" 

Instantly, Naruto's head whipped around. His eyes narrowed. "Sa-Sasuke teme?"

Kumo rolled her eyes. "No. I thought that I already told you. I thought you believed me!" Tears began to fall. "Oh why oh why do you doubt me Naruto? I am your friend! I will NEVER lie to you!" Then, very quickly, "Would you like some more ramen? Today's specialty's on the house, and I know just which one's the best kind to get your appetite working again." _Maybe I should try a different poison this time…this guy recovers remarkably fast!_

"!" Naruto's eyes watered at her suggestion. "Erimura-san! You are the best!"

* * *

Five bowls of ramen later, Naruto had to be carried to the hospital yet again.

* * *

After a wiggling, screeching Naruto was hauled from Ichiraku, Team Gai darted from the bushes. Neji's veins protruded once more as Lee and Tenten bustled around the vicinity, to the puzzlement of two Ichiraku workers. Then, when Lee poked his head into the Ichiraku garbage can, Ayame ran into the kitchen and slammed the door. 

Just then, Neji picked up someone walking toward Ichiraku. Taller than him, hair a bit spiked…nope, it was only Naruto's sensei Iruka. If Neji was any judge of character, the man would not so much as harm a cat.

However…

"Lee. Tenten." One head lifted from the frying pots, another poked out from beneath a pile of ramen bowls.

Iruka was walking his way, and on his back…

"Iruka-sensei," Neji greeted the chunin, "you have a piece of paper stuck to your back."

And on the paper were written the words, in large, crammed letters of bright red ink:

_**If Lee did spill the beans it would be a finger tied to the vest. **_

_**P.S. Look for Hatake Kakashi. I believe you will find your next clue there.**_

As soon as Neji finished reading, he shut down his Byakugan. _Kakashi?_ Was the infamous copy-nin a part of the conspiracy? _Highly unlikely_. Then perhaps he, like Iruka, was in some way going to be manipulated into the scheme.

_But what does the kidnapper want?_

"Neji! Look at this!" Tenten had torn the paper off a distressed Iruka's back and turned it over. On the other side lay a crude ink drawing of a section of a map.

Neji felt a vein pulsing, and it wasn't his Byakugan.

* * *

Hanashiba Ryoki stared and stared at the white-clothed, blonde-haired kunoichi sitting across him. A large fan had been strapped on her back, but compared to the person it belonged to, it could barely be noticed. Even Tou's fat cat was staring at her with interest. 

"Err…" Ryoki's head spun. _How old is she? Good gods! If she's really face-paint's brother then that guy must really be younger than me!_ Among the Kumorokunikunin, Ryoki had the reputation of being a very vain man.

Temari crossed her fingers. She gave him the look that a kunoichi gave you when you are about to die. "Now, Raikage-sama, about last week…"

_Face-paint's younger than me! He looked like he could be the Kazekage's father but he's younger than ME! _Ryoki felt the black waves drown out everything. Now, any normal man would celebrate how a guy several years younger than him looked even older than he was, but Ryoki… _I feel so OLD! They are all younger than me!_

His consciousness returned to the subject at hand when he felt a cold, threatening gaze penetrate the depth of his bones. Temari stared most coldly at him and offered him a frown. "Raikage-sama, I know that you are very busy, but there's the matter of Kankuro's visit to Kumogakure. I understand that he…"

_I am going to kill you Kumo!_

* * *

Kumo sneezed. She could feel intense waves of loathing radiating from faraway and another wave of malicious intent rolling like black thunder from Ichiraku. Then there was Naruto's screams that rattled the windows of Konoha hospital and shook the doors on their hinges. 

And all she did was walk away.

If she wasn't Shingen (Uchiha) Kumo, she might have felt responsible.

The streets lay before her like brickwork just before they toppled down on your head. Kumo had the strangest feeling that if she pounded the earth, it would shatter. Why was she so insecure? She rummaged around her pockets, the soles of her shoes, her hair, even the seams. It was a very familiar type of insecurity…

Ah, yes, she had run out of money.

Her stomach growled.

Due to instinct honed by six years of service in places where food, money, and honest restaurants were hard to come by, Kumo had developed a _super-nose_ trained just for the scent of money. She sniffed the air, took a quick peek, and when she saw that nobody paid attention to an innocent civilian, she walked right into Konoha Ninja Academy.

Six minutes and ten seconds later, Iruka's drawers lay open as the door to his office shut silently. His leaf-colored wallet sagged. The zipper was open, and the scent of money had vanished.

* * *

"Ah…really?" Neji couldn't quite bring himself to glare at Kakashi, so he resorted to staring balefully at the copy-nin instead, while Lee busied himself trying to make out the writing squeezed into spaces around a page of _Icha Icha Violence_ as Tenten hovered over him, trying not to get distracted by all the writing and pictures… 

But she kept on blushing and finally gave up, moving onto the map lightly sketched on the back cover.

The lazy copy-nin positively grinned through his mask. "Yep! She was a really strange lady. Wanted to see my book, scribbled something down, and went away." Now Neji was the one being stared at. "I don't understand it though. Do you?"

Neji cursed inwardly. _The excuses, the excuses! _"A lady asked us to find her book for her. She said that there's writing in there on page 101." _Nobody is stupid enough to believe this._ He thought, groaning in his head.

Kakashi cocked his head, contemplated this for a split second, and sighed. "Well, take the book. She seemed to like it." At Neji's look of utter, uncharacteristic surprise, he shrugged. "Give it to her."

* * *

As Team Gai walked away with a gapping Neji, Kakashi reached into his pocket and pulled out ANOTHER _Icha Icha Violence_.

* * *

Around the same time that Kakashi flipped to page 102, at the same hour, minute, second, nanosecond, actually, Kumo spotted from her perch near the Hyuuga main house two young shinobi walking down the street. 

_An Inuzuka and an Aburame!_ The little girl inside squealed and hugged a suspiciously familiar-looking puppet to her chest.

The two shinobi walked into the Hyuuga compound to emerge a minute later with a girl who was obviously a Hyuuga, but uncharacteristic of a Hyuuga, for she spoke with the volume of a mouse and held her hands in a way that looked like a nervous housewife. _But she looks like a pretty interesting person._ So thought Kumo. Flipping through _Konoha shinobi_, she skimmed the three's profiles and did a double take on Hyuuga Hinata. _She's the girl who got kidnapped?_ If so… _And they are chunins…well, who'd've thought? _

Although Kumo was generally very irresponsible about the things she did, she does maintain a high level of guilt over whatever the stupid people of the old Thunder Country did. Right now, the woodpecker picking away at her heart told her that she owed the Hyuuga girl something.

So, without further thought, Kumo dropped into steps behind the three.

* * *

"YOU MEAN GAI-SENSEI IS NOT – mmffff!" 

Once again Tenten dragged Lee away as Neji stepped in to fill the awkward gap. He thanked Asuma-sensei for letting them borrowing his cigar box (though it's doubtful he'll ever see it again), and hurried after Lee.

For the second time (and the last was the Chunin exam), Neji's rage boiled into the serene waters of killing intent.

_**To Hyuuga-san,**_

_**It seems that you are the only one who can really understand what I say. Good. So I will not take the time to remind you that leaked information one fingerless Gai…or a fingerless Hyuuga, whichever way you chose to take it.**_

_**P.S. Gai is still alive, trust me.**_

**_P.S.S. Your next clue awaits in the ANBU Interrogation Squad room. Good luck!_**

* * *

Another D-rank mission. 

Team 10, unlike Naruto, didn't particularly mind doing horridly boring little missions. In fact, they quite enjoyed the easier ones – or at least Hinata did. Kiba, who was about as prickly as Naruto, deep down disliked the mission. They were pulling weeds for god's sake!

And the woman wasn't very nice. In fact, she fired a crossbow at Kiba when they stepped into her house.

_Bandits! Us?_

So Team 10 labored for an hour and declared mission complete. The woman lived quite a ways from here, so Kiba estimated that by the time they got back to Konoha, the sun would've set.

He was quite aware, just as Shino, that somebody had been following them. But a long time passed, and the stalker did not emerge. Thus the Inuzuka put this little fact under "to be investigated" and hurried his pace in the lead.

* * *

In theory, Neji and Lee waited like any good gentlemen for Tenten to finish throwing up. 

In reality, Neji and Tenten waited for _Lee_ to stop throwing up.

In fear of staining her clothes, Tenten abandoned her usual "shake-Lee-till-he-snaps-out-of-it" plan and went for the "patiently-waiting-with-kunais" one. At her side, Neji shook his head as he averted his eyes. Lee's reaction was a mere byproduct of their little encounter with Morino Ibiki's infamous torture squad.

But they had gotten the piece of paper with the map. That was the MOST important thing.

_I must be going crazy._ Neji thought. He should not get so worked up over this. But the earlier they found Gai…the earlier they found Gai _and_ the kidnapper, Neji would be all the happier…

His eyes twitched again.

They were trying, rebelling against his character, to pop out at the kidnapper's words.

* * *

Kumo walked behind Team 10. 

This was all so…boring…

She hung her head.

A row of shuriken narrowly missed her face.

* * *

"Oh great!" Kiba growled at the bandits circling them. Akamaru echoed his excitement with a loud bark. 

"Be careful, Kiba," Shino warned, "they aren't ordinary bandits." As he said this, he and Kiba formed a protective barrier around Hinata.

The men encircled them silently, watching them like hawks testing their prey. As Hinata raised her hands quickly and activated Byakugan, the bandits struck.

A storm of kunais rained down upon the Konoha shinobis, followed by another flurry of shurikens and finally a direct frontal assault. Suddenly the Konoha nins found themselves separated from each other.

Kiba crouched on the ground, Akamaru on his back. With a shout two Kiba's launched themselves at the bandits. "Tsuuga!"

Jyuuken-ing each shuriken with accuracy and speed, Hinata swung her gaze to her two teammates for a brief moment. She paid for this as a kunai grazed her shoulder. Focusing with determination, Hinata forced more chakra to her palms and prepared for another shower of kunais.

But the bandits around her closed in. Unbeknownst to her, they were pushing toward a cliff.

Kikai bugs swarmed in the air in a storm of their own as Shino stood in the center, arms raised outward. _Bad._ Was what he thought. _There are shinobis mixed in! _Then a hand reached through the storm, and the gray haired shinobi lunged toward Shino. _Too close!_

A piercing roar reached Shino's ears.

Akamaru, stunned with a poisoned kunai in its leg, lay helplessly as Kiba, panic welling to the brim, fought futilely to clear a path to Hinata. To Shino. Outside. Anywhere! _Just don't let Akamaru get hurt again. I can't let Akamaru suffer!_

There were only three Konoha nin and more than twenty bandits, half of them shinobis. A battle to lose…

The shadows danced. Little by little they wiggled on the earth. As a jounin-level shinobi thrust two rounds of shuriken at Hinata, who had backed to the edge of the cliff, the shadows struck.

_Crunch._

Silence descended, and not just around Hinata.

Kiba gazed around wonderingly as the bandits suddenly dropped to the earth without sound.

Shino observed something more. The shadows were soaked with blood. They were no longer shadows but twirling tendrils of black covered with red. They moved with a graceful, deadly motion similar to that of Gaara's sand.

Quietly, Team 10 collected themselves. Byakugan scanned the area, but sighted no one.

"They…they just…" Kiba murmured as he looked down at one shinobi.

"Not dead," Shino interjected, "but crippled."

Every arm and leg jutted at an odd angle, odd even for broken bone standards. There was no doubt that these shinobi would not attack anyone for a very long time.

* * *

"NO LEE!" screeched Tenten for the tenth time that day as she put a hand over Lee's mouth. When will he learn? 

She glanced over at Neji for support, but the Hyuuga was twitching madly. _Since when…?_ It was rare to see the normally calm, cool, and collected Hyuuga prodigy lose his cool, so Tenten took this opportunity to memorize his features as his lips trembled and a dark red hue rose to his cheeks. His white eyes, if possible, went whiter with fury.

Behind them, the Yamanachi door opened. Ino peeked out. "SEE YOU TOMORROW HYUUGA-KUN!" And there waved the source of Neji's fury. Well, Tenten had to admit, the kidnapper had one hell of a mind. _But why is he doing this? What can he possibly gain from kidnapping _Gai?

Neji steadied himself, prepared for whatever insanity might come next, and read the slip of paper.

_**Map completed, horray!**_

Instantly the Hyuuga prodigy pulled Tenten over. "Give me the pieces!" His voice demanded no questions, so Tenten obliged.

But when the map was finished…

It was just a map.

No big, red X, nothing, not even labels.

Neji flipped over the last piece. _More words…_

_**Oops! I forgot to mark down the X where it's supposed to be! **_

_**P.S. Gai's in Ichiraku's closet, by the way. You should find him before four…oh…cause I've put a sack around his face and he might be out of air by then…**_

Neji looked up at the setting sun and swore.

* * *

"Naruto…" Sakura sighed. "What's wrong with you?" 

Naruto twitched and wiggled and giggled and flopped.

His face turned blue, red, purple, yellow, white, black, and every other color possible.

His throat made odd gagging sounds that only fish could make on land, and his eyes were rolling at maddening speed toward every direction.

Naruto was seriously ill.

But the thing was, he seemed to be enjoying this.

He smiled.

If Kumo was here, she would have burst into eternal laughter. This was technically not experiment, for the poison was a confirmed product and thus Naruto was more of a trial than a specimen.

* * *

In the adjacent hospital ward, Tsunade rolled her eyes as Jiraiya panicked. 

"I tell you, it was HIM! The Uchiha boy! It was him!"

Shizune, it seems, felt it her duty to interject. "But Jiraiya-sama, Sasuke hasn't left the hospital for weeks, and this morning he was doing some check-up because he seemed to have caught a cold…"

"IT WAS HIM!" Jiraiya rumbled.

Tsunade and Shizune exchanged glances. First Naruto, now Jiraiya?

* * *

And then...

"We need a medic!" Tenten's fear-striken voice shrilled through the hospital like an alarm clock one o'clock in the morning.

Tsunade stuck her head out the door, took one look at purple-faced Gai, and narrowed her eyes.

* * *

Kumo, once again, found herself strutting down the streets of Konoha. But this time she whistled. _Ahhh…one deed done is one guilt settled, yeah? _At least that was what Reibane said. Personally, Kumo thought the theory a bit out of sync with reality. _But beating those bandits up like that…I feel a bit guilty..._ After all, she used to be a bandit of sorts. 

Konoha's afternoon activities buzzed around her like bees. She passed the baker's shop, passed Ichiraku, passed a lot of other stores, only to stop in a somber street that looked rather…empty.

Sluggishly, she raised her eyes to meet the closed windows of the Uchiha mansion.

The house must have been abandoned ever since the massacre, or at least somebody had not bothered to take care of it very well, for cobwebs hung in masses from corner to corner, beam to beam, and dust bunnies gathered on the wooden floor where feet should have tread. Nobody repaired the cracked walls. Nobody cleaned all the bloodstains off.

Vegetation thrived like parasites, crawling in ugly, distorted lines over the courtyard.

Kumo looked on, wordless.

She should laugh.

Her brain should be uncorking a hundred ideas on how the house could be remodeled into the perfect haunted house.

_Uchiha…_

But she refused to think these thoughts.

She couldn't.

_Uchiha…_

Shingen-sama had that gray look in his eyes when he spoke to her. _Your family is dead…_ He looked like a man who pitied her, wanted to cry, but could not, and pitied her even more that she was too little to understand and cry. _Massacred, just three nights ago…all of them, except one…and the traitor Uchiha._ The survivor, Sasuke Uchiha… _Itachi. Remember his name. Someday you will seek him, and you might kill him. The decision belongs to you…and the other._ Uchiha, massacred. Right in this house where nothing was disturbed for years.

_Massacred. Do you know what it means?_

Kumo closed her eyes.

_Do I?_

The Uchiha clan, massacred. Killed.

Itachi Uchiha.

_Do I?_

* * *

Kotetsu and Izumo exchanged glances as a young man wearing the apparels of a shinobi but not the headband of one walked through the gates without so much as a greeting or, for security matters, stopping. 

"Hey you!"

The young man waved a stack of papers in the air. Vaguely, the seal of the Raikage could be seen.

When Kotetsu and Izumo started after him, he vanished into thin air.

The two guards exchanged glances.

They knew an enigma when they saw one, and the stranger who just walked through had "enigma" written all over him.

* * *

Ryoki sat on his table, fingers crossed, a perfect imitation of Temari's pose. Now he cleared his throat, looked every member of the Kumogakure council in the eye, and spoke, the razor sharp, chilling tone that Temari used, to the _older_ men. This, after all, was the grand finale… 

"I hereby declare this meeting adjourned."

Men exchanged glances on their way out.

Since when did the childish, cowardly Raikage learn to speak and sit like that?

"A spitting image of the Kazekage, I say," said one man.

Another spoke up. "No…more like…the Hokage."

Member two received _looks_. "Have you even seen the Hokage?"

Member two didn't, but he sure wished that he had…

_Rumor has it…that the Hokage has…_

And his thoughts stopped right there as Tou's fat cat curled around his leg…and bit his toes.

TBC

* * *

Author's note: 

It's odd how inspirations pop out to you anywhere, any time. I can be sitting in class and jotting down history notes when suddenly the idea rushes onto me…

Fighting scenes are, for me, a difficulty. I haven't had much practice in writing about fights, and so forgive me if the Team 10 battle was a bit lame. Hahah.

And if you are wondering why Naruto suffers so much…well…who else can fall for the same trick twice and not suspect a thing?

Don't worry, other characters will come in later. In fact, I had planned to give Sasuke a big part in this chapter, but…I thought it would be more appropriate to end the chapter on a somber note (for once). Yet I couldn't resist adding in the shenanigan in Kumogakure.

Next chapter: finally the Uchiha survivors meet! And more mayhem for the rest of Konoha!


	5. Chapter 4

Chappie 4! And the longest one so far! Phew!

It's so darn hot here in Arkansas…arrrggghhh

To start off, I will answer the questions.

1. What was the black and red shadow technique? Get ready for a long explanation.

It is a variation of the Kagemane jutsu that the Nara clan uses. However, instead of freezing the targets, the "Shadow Hand Technique" (and I have no idea what this is in Japanese) allows Kumo to elongate shadows and then use the shadows as gateways for her chakra. In other words, she can use shadows as a medium for chakra, so anywhere where there's a shadow, her chakra can go in and go out at another region on the shadow.

Shikamaru's new jutsu lets him make the shadow crawl onto the victim's body, using the body as a medium. Kumo's jutsu employs a similar mechanism.

The difference between these two jutsus is that while Shikamaru's Kagemane is restricted to the point where the shadow makes contact with the target, Kumo's jutsu lets her reach the target with her chakra even if he jumps out of the shadow's way.

The downside is that Kumo's jutsu can't freeze people, and it takes her more chakra to perform this jutsu than is required of one who uses Kagemane.

2. As for if Kumo can use the Sharingan…well…you'll just have to find out, don't you?

Some of the other questions are self-explanatory in this chapter. So read on!

* * *

Disclaimer: I never owned Naruto and I don't own it now 

**

* * *

Chapter 4 Never Trust an Uchiha**

_In which an enigma walks the streets, Naras have a secret meeting, Yamanakas face the bee crisis, Sasuke gets a nighttime visitor, Sakura falls down a well, and jounins go in the hospital._

_

* * *

Do I?_

_Do I? Do I? Do I? Do I? Do I? Do I?_

Abruptly Kumo blinked. She had been doing a lot of blinking lately. Blinking helped her forget things, and now she looked up, looked down, looked around, and grinned like a monkey.

She couldn't quite remember why the "Do I" had been stuck in her head, but it sounded pretty agonizing to her, so she threw it into some dim corner of her mind and barred it shut with a five hundred ton cement block.

"What a house!" she exclaimed. "Perfect…hahahah…" Then she remembered the puppet…_Even better!_

The gods of angsty thoughts threw their hands up and gave in.

* * *

A fog of mystery drifted through the streets of Konoha, turning heads everywhere. 

At the center of enigmas, a tall, dark, and handsome young man strode toward the Hokage tower, full of secretive purposes.

Nobody stopped the foreign shinobi…because mysterious don't answer questions.

* * *

"This is troublesome," said Konoha's number one genius and all time shougi champion, glancing at the somber, lazy, or, in some cases, snoring faces of the Nara men and the fiery-eyed faces of the Nara women. 

"Be quiet, Shikamaru!" Nara Shikamaru's mother hissed, holding the frying pot over his head.

"Alright, alright, geez…" Shikamaru frowned. _But this is supposed to be a secret meeting…_

Indeed, the Naras were having a secret meeting.

They were having a secret Nara bloodline meeting in Konoha's number one restaurant, where an average of one hundred eighty-eight people visited per night. Right now the place roared with one hundred eighty-eight voices and occasionally cries of pain as ferocious women stomped on the foot of drunken men.

Shikamaru winced as he saw Shiranui Genma limp away from Mitarashi Anko. _Sheesh. Women are so troublesome, and he's an idiot for even going near her._

Another member of the Nara family piped up, "Shikamaru-chan (Shikamaru winced) is right, you know. Why are we holding a secret bloodline meeting in Konoha Flame?"

"Nobody knew," hissed one Nara woman who Shikamaru deemed to be an aunt of some distant relation, "nobody knew UNTIL YOU SPILLED IT!"

Shikamaru and Shikato glanced at one another. _Troublesome._

From the corner of his eyes, Shikamaru spotted a familiar-looking boy drifting through the dining guests like a ghost or…_Is that Sasuke? Why is he stealing food from the tables?_

And then Sasuke looked over…and smiled.

"I must be going crazy…" Shikamaru muttered.

He had no idea that "Sasuke" had been stalking him the moment the Nara family gathered. He also had no idea that "Sasuke" slipped a dozen different pills into the Nara family's drinks.

* * *

Asuma looked at the house, looked down, looked around, and eyed Kurenai. A few minutes later, a _pop_ sounded as the infamous copy-nin appeared on the street, one lazy eye staring at nothing. _And then_ a skinny man wearing sunglasses and a blue bandana walked towards them. Though he had tried to hide it, the newest comer had two black eye underneath the black sunglasses. 

All four jounins looked at one another, eyes straining to see three directions at once. Finally, Asuma coughed. "Did you –?" he began, reaching into his vest pocket, but beat Kurenai beat him to it and held up a scraggly piece of bandage. Immediately Asuma deflated. "Oh. You too."

Ebisu pushed up his sunglasses. They twinkled nervously. "Me as well, Kurenai-san."

Three pairs of eyes looked into Kakashi's half a pair. Said jounin scratched the back of his head, grinned in a lopsided way, and replied, "Hai?"

Crossing her arms thoughtfully, Kurenai took a few steps away from Ebisu, eyed Kakashi's _Icha Icha Violence_, and at last settled next to Asuma. "An invitation to the Uchiha mansion," she spoke, narrowing her eyes at two established perverts. "It has been abandoned for two years."

Suspicion cracked in the air like a water balloon.

Asuma held up a mental umbrella.

Kakashi leveled a calculating gaze at the house. "From the outside, nothing looks very suspicious."

Several Kurenai kunais of suspicion stabbed in his direction.

"I think we should –" Ebisu began, and stopped at the _looks_.

"We?" Kakashi cocked his only visible eyebrow.

"Ebisu-san, you are making a _suggestion?_" Asuma exclaimed. Once a closet pervert, always a closet pervert, and your ideas could only come from the closet, where the worst kind of ideas had been buried in dust for centuries.

Then an ominous fog of mystery passed down the street…and stopped before the four jounins. The young man at the fog's center _could have_ peered at the house, but Asuma couldn't be sure. The guy was an enigma, after all.

Slowly, quiet as death, the young man spoke, "I would not go in if I were you." Then he turned around and disappeared into the fog, as though he was _never_ there.

Asuma gulped. "Did he just…"

"You don't ask questions about mysteries," Kakashi cut in.

He received _looks._

_You are a mystery if I've ever seen one._ Thought two jounins at once, trying discreetly to make out what's lying under that mask of his. Kurenai just glared scissors at the copy-nin's, conveniently, mask.

Then Ebisu spoke again, "We don't have to go in…you know."

Once more the jounins glared at each other. Five minutes passed. Asuma fidgeted in his pocket for a cigar, but instead his fingers touched candy wrappers and a piece of bandage.

"Um…" Kurenai picked up conversation #2. "Why are you still here?" Her eyes pierced and stabbed multitude of guilt into the hearts of all males present.

The male jounins exchanged glances, but Ebisu was frantically dodging Kakashi and Asuma's gazes. "Why are _you_ still here?" Asuma decidedly shot back. The absence of a smoke was _killing_ him.

Silence.

The jounins reached a consensus at last. Without a word, each took their piece of bandage and dropped it into the garbage. Then, as one, they stepped carefully into the Uchiha house.

"How bad can it be?" Ebisu asked.

Three jounins groaned in dread. He just _had_ to ask.

A pair of puppet eyes glinted in the dark.

The door slammed shut and the screams began.

* * *

At this exact moment, Kumo passed by the Yamanaka residence and smelled honey. 

Inspiration was good to her today.

Four pieces of bandage fluttered to the bottom of the trash can.

A lurker emerged from the bushes where it had hid underneath a very eye-catching box meant to resemble the road.

_**To Sarutobi Asuma,**_

_**Be at the main Uchiha house by sundown if you want to see your cigarettes again.**_

_**To Kurenai,**_

_**Be at the main Uchiha house by sundown, or never SEE MR. WIGGLES…FOREVER!**_

_**To Ebisu closet pervert,**_

_**You saw Jiraiya, yah? Unless you wish to end up in the hospital like him, be at the Uchiha house by sundown.**_

_**P.S. if you throw ignore this note and attempt to throw it away, I will give you a black eye.**_

_**P.S.S. if you ignore my first warning, I will give you another black eye.**_

Kakashi's bandage lay at the bottom. The writing, however, had been crossed off.

"Oh man…" the lurker groaned in disappointment.

"Konohamaru-chan?"

"Konohamaru-kun?"

The lurker groaned.

"Why are you crawling in a garbage can?"

* * *

The Yamanakas have a legendary vase of bees locked up in their basement. 

It is said in ancient prophecies long ago…that the bees may only be unlocked during times of crisis…or bad things may happen.

* * *

People have always wondered how the Yamanaka's got their flowers for the flower shop. Heck, nobody ever saw them picking flowers. Even the thought of a Yamanaka Inoichi prancing the meadows, flower basket in hand, gave people the willies. 

The thought of a prancing Ino was more appealing, but less likely.

Unfortunately, Ino found tonight, that for the first time, the "flower-duty" has been passed to her.

"I'm so sorry, Ino!" cried Ino's father as he lay feebly in bed.

"I'm so sorry, Ino!" cried Ino's mother as she wobbled to the couch and lay down. Her forehead could have boiled a thousand eggs and melted three glaciers.

"I'm cough so so-coughrry, cough cough cough Ino ---" said Ino's grandfather as he lay in his nice big bed.

"Oh Ino! I'm so –"

"Never MIND!" screamed Ino as her grandmother tried to explain herself, sitting on the couch.

It was customary in Yamanaka tradition that men got the bed when they were sick and women got the couch. It made more sense. That way, the Yamanaka women would be closer to the kitchen, that one holy place were no male Yamanakas are allowed to go in case they tripped on something and impaled themselves on a fruit knife.

Right now, Yamanaka Ino felt that the whole world was against her.

_Flower-duty. Me?_

She would commit suicide if forehead-girl saw her. Hell she would commit suicide even if it was just Shikamaru. _But I will take him down with me…_ She thought, just for good measure.

Then she picked up the flower basket, climbed into the Yamanaka trapdoor in the secret basement, walked through the tunnels that only Yamanakas knew about, and emerged in a flower field, half an hour later, situated on Konoha's far outskirts.

As soon as Ino left, all the members of the house bolted up, even the grandparents.

The Yamanakas all thought that the image of Ino picking flowers in a meadow would get her a boyfriend. They all thought she needed one.

"Phew, faking that pox was hard!" exclaimed Inoichi, peeling away the angry little patches of pox from his skin.

"What? Try faking a 110 degree fever!" challenged Ino's mom.

"Huh? You call that hard?" Ino's grandmother shrilled, "Try –"

"MY BACK!"

Three Yamanaka heads swiveled in grandfather's direction.

"Ahhh…." Inoichi sweated, "you are a master fraud, father. Now please, there's no need to –"

A loud crack whipped through the house.

A vase that somehow got next to grandpa Yamanaka's footstool broke into pieces…and the little, very poisonous honey bees that had dwelled in that vase for dozens of Yamanaka generations swelled through the house in sheer curiosity.

Unfortunately, sheer curiosity consisted of running into things that were generally human and susceptive to lethal injections of honey bee poison.

And bees had the instinct to sting whatever human things they ran through that swatted at them.

And Yamanaka Inoichi had the instinct to attack anything that ran into him that wasn't human.

* * *

Ryoki sat at his desk and sweated. 

Now that the meeting had been taken care of, there was only one thing to do.

"NIBURO!" he hollered.

Then he picked up a brush and wrote quickly on a scroll.

_**Very bad, Kumo. You've really done it this time.**_

_**The Kazekage has promised to kill you.**_

And when Niburo opened the door, Ryoki gave him a scroll. "Now, Niburo, I want you to send this scroll via messenger birds to Konoha." He winked conspiratorially. "I'm giving a scroll that's going to warn Kumo of the Kazekage, aren't I?"

Niburo frowned in puzzlement. "Ha-hai?"

"Good," Ryoki folded his hands. "And I did tell you to send it with all speed to Konoha, didn't I?"

"Hai, Raikage-sama!"

"Good," Ryoki smiled. "And here's the bit you won't remember if anybody asks you: destroy the scroll and make sure nobody sees you."

"Hai, Raikage-sama." Niburo nodded. The Raikage was a tad odd sometimes, but he was still _the _awesome Raikage who toppled the old Raikage's oppressive regime.

* * *

When the door closed, Ryoki turned in his seat to find Tou's fat cat staring at him accusingly. 

"Hey, it's not like I didn't write a warning scroll to Kumo and send it out," said Ryoki. "It just probably gets lost, you know. These things happen."

He stared at his empty wallet and thought, _she deserves it._

* * *

Kakashi dodged a whole barrage of statues, landed on a trap, leaped away just as tomato juice splattered all over the walls, broke into a smoke screen, dodged another volley of water balloons, landed on the ceiling, and felt his legs sink into the wood. 

Asuma ran in circles as Kurenai rolled on the floor, screeching.

Ebisu, who fell into a hole the moment the doors closed, was presently nowhere to be found.

Kakashi sighed, used his Sharingan for the one hundredth time in one hour, and dispelled the genjutsu. At once his legs stopped sinking.

A plastic axe swung into him.

Eggs cracked on his vest.

_This is a mad house._ He thought, just as a puppet that looked disturbingly familiar dropped down in front of him…and cackled.

Then an army of rat skeletons marched out from holes in the walls.

_Childish…_thought Kakashi, but he was too amused to leave the house.

* * *

To the horror of every person who has watched groovy horror movies in his childhood, man-size spiders clambered down the ceiling…toward Asuma. 

To Asuma's growing dismay that-so-was-not-bordering-on-terror-and-rage-at-whoever-thought-this-was-funny, he found himself stuck in a very big spider-web. And the floor underneath his feet really was sucking him in.

Stomachs growled.

Asuma was more than a little disappointed that none of them belonged to him.

* * *

A golden sliver vanished in the West. 

"Finally," Sasuke groaned, opening his eyes.

A few hours ago, a group of medics came in and snapped him in a horrid bodysuit made from twenty tons of lead. When he struggled, a particularly clumsy nurse nearly ripped his head off with her shoe. He could still taste the pig _things_ and age-old blood.

_The nurses in this hospital are murderers._

If he hadn't kept his eyes closed, three hours of sunlight beaming down at his eyes would have drawn patterns into his brain. He _still_ couldn't move his head.

That pudgy, stink-footed nurse was gonna DIE.

_I was going to be released from the hospital today, dammit!_

A rattle against the shutters drew him out of his reverie. He strained his ears to focus on the scuffle.

BING. BANG! "Ow!" CRASH. BBBBBOOOOOMMMMMM. "Ooooooowwwwww…"

Sasuke watched in sudden realization as a rack by his bedside, full of scalpels and needles and screws, leaned over…and keeled in his direction.

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

A few seconds later, Sasuke stood up from the floor.

He would have liked to glare at his bed, or the things that without a doubt now penetrated his bed, but he couldn't, so instead he imagined himself glaring, red Sharingan orbs spinning madly. And he felt, rather than heard, the new presence in his room.

"Hello! Sasuke!" A face loomed in front of him.

Sasuke tried to move his neck, winced inward at the pain, and gave up.

"Errmm…" said the trespasser.

"…" replied Sasuke.

Then Sasuke _saw_, rather than felt.

He experienced the disturbing sensation of déjà vu and something else that, for a lack of better words, felt like mashed yams with fish gravy.

It was all there…

The tied hair. The black eyes. The pale, cool complexion. The lean, enigmatic posture.

Sasuke's mind spun along with the Sharingan. A growl burst from his throat. "Itachi."

Two hands circled his neck…and snapped.

_

* * *

At last!_ Thought Kurenai, running toward the end of the hallway, where a white light shone like the sun after a storm at sea. _Light!_

The ghosts moaned.

Kumo's bunshin pulled the strings.

Some people never learn.

Only bugs flew heedlessly toward the light with all speed.

Somebody shrieked like a banshee.

* * *

Sasuke felt his neck. _It's healed!_

He stared at Itachi, and felt his jaw drop six feet under with horror, for Itachi was smiling.

Itachi sighed. "Unfortunately, no. I am not Uchiha Itachi."

"No?" Sasuke blinked. The Sharingan froze, like the rest of his mind. He was stuck in Ice Age mode.

"No," the stranger-who-was-not-Itachi repeated. "Call me Erimura – no, Uchiha…errr…you don't really care about my first name, right?" The way his eyes sparked…the way his mouth twitched upward…if he really was an Uchiha then he was the DISGRACE of the family. Uchihas don't smile. Uchiha eyes don't sparkle.

"Uchiha?" Sasuke murmured. _Uchiha!_ Not Itachi, but "Uchiha?" It was crazy. Ice Age was a whacked out world. It was impossible for dead people to come back to life. Itachi wouldn't have been so careless as to let a little boy escape during the massacre.

The boy rolled his eyes. "Yes. Uchiha. Get it? Your cousin. Kidnapped by the Cloud thirteen years ago. Yep. Yep. No need to hug me now. Just you long-lost cousin. Don't cry. I'm not expecting you to." And when Sasuke really didn't move, the boy groaned. "Kidding! Hug me already!" And he extended his arms for a hug.

Sasuke snorted. "Uchiha? _You_?" These two words were followed by a glare that would've made Neji go on his knees and beg to be made apprentice of the awesome glare that could freeze two oceans and a continent.

The boy frowned and shook Sasuke like a rag doll. "Oy! Duh! Why are all Konoha shinobi such dobes!"

Sasuke gapped. Dobe? Him! He was a bastard through and through but not a _dobe_. That was Naruto's title. Sasuke, on the other hand, would die before he's called that!

"Uchiha? Show me your Sharingan then!" Sasuke challenged, "or do you not have it?" His eyes narrowed into slits.

"Ne, Sasuke-kun," the voice dripped maple syrup, imitating Ino to perfection, "There's no need to be so…Neji-ish. OF COURSE I HAVE THE SHARINGAN! Butmeanwhilewhydon'tweenjoyourreunion? I've brought sake!" He winked and patted a bag slung over his shoulder. In the dim lighting Sasuke could just make out "Konoha Flame" etched on the linen.

_You are avoiding my question._ Thought Sasuke.

Then the boy swung the bag, and Sasuke saw black.

* * *

Kumo blinked three times, and let out a small 'oops'. 

"Oops."

She hand't meant to do that. They were going to drink sake together! Alright, so it was watered down sake…okaaay, it was really just water…with orange juice. _At least he would have gotten his daily vitamins_.

The oily gears in her head clicked as she gazed down at the limp Uchiha.

Well, everybody seemed to mistake her for Sasuke nowadays…and a prankster NEVER let any opportunity go to waste.

* * *

The fog of mysteries entered the Hokage tower. 

It climbed the stairs, turned down hallways, and marched into the Godaime's office.

Seven and a half pairs of eyes looked up at the enigma's entrance.

The foreign shinobi _might have_ glanced at a red and white Neji, a crying Lee, a bruised Jiraiya, and an extremely clueless yet sick Naruto, and a slightly ruffled if not scratched Kakashi.

It was probably a trick of light that people saw the foreign shinobi's lips crack into a smile of pure amusement.

Then Oyamaru Reibane opened his mouth and spoke cheerfully, "I see you've met Kumo-chan."

* * *

Night. Eight o'clock. Time for Sakura to go home after a long day's shift. It had indeed been long, that with the sudden arrival of over twenty Naras in the last hour, each inflicted with a rather _unique_ sickness. 

_First Naruto, now the Nara clan?_

She put down the clipboard and spoke in an experienced medic tone to the two mummies on opposite sides of the room. "Asuma-sensei, Kurenai-sensei. You should be out of the hospital in three days." She attempted a smile, and grimaced as it hit a sore spot. Somebody had snuck into her room (shudder) while she was away, and set up a trap. The moment Sakura walked into her home, a mitten with three tons of gravel swung into her face. She had landed three yards away only to find that the _ground_ was really crisscrossed sticks. Her little moment ended with a spectacular splash in the mud hole.

"In the meantime," she continued speaking, with a new, sharp edge to her tone, "do rest well tonight."

Asuma seemed to speaking, but under all that bandage Sakura couldn't really tell.

She walked out of the door and sighed. _Ebisu-sensei is still missing, and Kakashi-sensei…_ According to him, the light at the end of the tunnel was a one-thousand kilowatt electric grid constructed with chakra. Only the cushions that had been thoughtfully placed before the trap to slow the fall had prevented Kurenai and Asuma from getting utterly fried.

Kakashi, being the experienced shinobi he was, walked to the trap rather than ran toward it, and so was spared the fate of the other two jounins.

Sakura shook her head. Whoever plotted this prank had gone too far.

Then she saw Sasuke, walking down the hall as if his neck hadn't been broken by nurse stink-foot. The blue shirt and the Uchiha fan were unmistakable. His hair was also short and spiked, not Erimura's long, tied hair.

The weird thing was that Sasuke had a huge sack slung over his shoulder.

_Sasuke-kun?_

Like a dutiful medic, Sakura followed the boy who was supposed to be lying in bed, recovering from his neck injury, out of the hospital.

Meanwhile, nurse stink-foot sneezed while staring at air.

Did she just see Uchiha Sasuke from ward thirteen fix his hair in the women's bathroom?

* * *

Sakura followed Sasuke, and followed, and followed. 

Then passed through the near empty streets of Konoha, through the park, through the woods, and just when Sakura endeavored to reach out and call his name, he vanished.

Sakura blinked and glanced around.

There was a well next to her.

That was all she saw before something rammed into her and threw her down the well.

She screamed, trying frantically to gather chakra to her feet, but…

_SPLASH!_

* * *

Kumo chuckled to herself. At least all the orange juice didn't go to waste… 

From the well, Sakura shrilled, "THIS ISN'T WATER AND IT'S NOT FUNNY!"

* * *

All the way in Sunagakure, Sabaku no Gaara opened the note brought to him by Temari's messenger bird. 

A scuffle came from the hallway.

Gaara glared at the door.

Meekly, Kankuro stuck his head in. "Ga-Gaara…well?"

The Kazekage sighed and held out the slip of paper for Kankuro to see.

_**Gaara and Kankuro,**_

_**According to the Raikage, Shingen Kumo has gone to Konoha on a diplomatic mission. However, it appears that she has taken Kankuro's puppet with her.**_

_**Also Gaara, the Raikage has complied with your plan. He conveys that so long as you don't kill her, it's fine with him.**_

_**Temari**_

Gaara looked up to find Kankuro staring at him hopefully.

He sighed again. "Pack your things, we are heading to Konoha _right now_."

* * *

Meanmeanwhile, Kumo walked through the deserted streets of Konoha Sasuke-style. 

She had been doing a lot of Konoha street-walking lately, she reflected.

Then she saw somebody in the meadows far away…

Immediately she crept closer. _An escaped Yamanaka!_ Without further thought, she formed a flurry of handseals.

"Shadow Hand Technique!"

Seconds later, Ino screamed…and would have been heard if the kidnapping shadows didn't cover her mouth.

In slow motion, the flower basket clattered to the earth…and the flowers lay still.

* * *

Konohamaru and Moegi twitched at the message carved onto Chouji's rice bowl. 

_**To the rest of the Konoha Corps,**_

_**I told you not to ignore my messages.**_

_**P.S. If you ignore this one, too, you will find Udon tomorrow in itty-bitty little pieces…so START COLLECTING THE MAPS!**_

"No signature," said Konohamaru.

Chouji frowned as he looked over their shoulders. "That looks like a threat."

Shadows on the dining table moved.

Moegi glanced at Chouji, horrified. "OH NO! WE'VE SPILLED THE BEANS!"

The shadows struck.

* * *

Meanmeanmeanwhile… 

"This is stupid!" growled Kiba.

"Ki-Kiba-kun…" Hinata whispered.

Shino just stood like a tree and let his bugs sweep the area for traps.

Ten feet away, Kiba stepped on something that snapped…and swore as his feet sank into dog poop for the thirty-second time.

Then Hinata walked into a trap herself and moments later dangled down from a double-reinforced fishing net.

TBC

* * *

Author's note: 

Bwahahah! Loved the poem, Ashen Rose!

I spend so long typing these chapters that I miss my sleep…oh well…

Not much to say right now…brain's on the frizz…

Next Chapter: Kumo is exposed, but will that stop the mayhem? The conclusion and the beginning of the worst as the Sand Siblings arrive with a vengeance!


	6. Chapter 5

Chappie 5, yay! Inspiration's been running thin lately, so I can't say that this chapter is as good as the rest, but I've done my best!

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Naruto…Naruto…I do not own Naruto

**

* * *

Chapter 5 Kumo on Trial**

_In which a conclusion is drawn, and something else begins_

* * *

"NOT YOU!" 

The Yamanakas hung their heads in guilt as a flabbergast Shizune hurriedly called in more nurses. This time, the poxes on their volcano red skins were by no means fake.

* * *

A group of Aburame shinobis had to be sent to the Yamanaka residence to control the poisonous little honey bees, but by then, three people, including one Morino Ibiki and a Shiranui Genma, had already been stung.

* * *

The moon shone brilliantly as Kotetsu and Izumo exchanged shifts with Iruka and Raido. Then a soft clang came from the alley. 

"What was that!" All four shinobi whirled to the disturbance, kunais out, until they realized that it was just Ino tied up in a straightjacket, flopping madly in the dumpster.

* * *

Twenty miles away from Konoha, a cabbage farmer struck the earth with his plow and found a man buried underneath. When the man was dragged out, two black eyes could be seen beneath a pair of sunglasses. 

"People sur' are plantin' weird stuff these days." The farmer scratched his head, shrugged, and left the Konoha shinobi in the mud.

* * *

Sakura shivered in the cool wind of night. Her cloth clung tightly around her, made all the more sticky by drying orange juice.

* * *

The Konoha hospital janitor rubbed his eyes. 

"Why…why…" He couldn't quite find the words for it, for it's not everyday you see an Uchiha Sasuke dressed in nothing but a hospital gown tied up and gagged, and stuffed into a janitor's closet.

* * *

Udon woke up. 

He looked up, looked down, looked around, and all he saw was cardboard.

Two stories above him, Ayame the ramen girl turned off her night light and went to sleep, blissfully oblivious of the scuffle underneath.

* * *

Chouji woke up with a huge headache. His stomach hurt, his arms hurt, and just about every other body part was also on fire. 

On the kitchen floor lay a frothing Konohamaru and a knocked out Moegi.

_At least I still have my chips._ Thought Chouji, reaching for the cupboard where his ten thousand eighty-one bags of chips were kept…and froze as an avalanche of candy wrappers crashed down on him.

* * *

"NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" 

Team 10 froze in their track and shot each other warning glances that said: _Did you hear that?_ They were close…so close! Konoha gates rose out just ten yards in front of them, but their senses blared at something out of the norm. Where were the gate guards?

"I…hate…traps…" said Kiba with an eye twitching. Aside from the two red stripes that normally stretched down his face, he had a blue and a yellow stripe painted onto his forehead.

"I-it can't be-be-be that ba-d," said Hinata nervously. It had taken them an hour just to cut through the fishing net.

_Snap._

Shino had stepped into another trap.

Kiba and Hinata watched in horror…and a little anticipation, as Shino's jacket ripped.

Never daunted by such trickery, Shino's bugs swarmed all over him, and in ten seconds flat he was wearing another jacket, good as new.

* * *

"This is…" Ryoki felt a vein pulsing as he carefully examined the package. Apparently Kumo had sent it to him, apparently it was sent with all speed via the fastest messenger bird in Konoha that could take so much weight. 

As Ryoki shot out a hand and tentatively opened a flap, a scream like a banshee shattered the windows.

"Urrrgh!" Ryoki ducked under his desk, joined by Tou's fat cat, and the two huddled it out as the banshee scream echoed away into the night. (Throughout Kumogakure and another ten mile radius, people shut their windows and said to one another: It's the ANBU Captain again.)

Like a bitten rabbit, the Raikage peered up, and when nothing nasty burst from the package, he closed his eyes, reached out...and opened the box completely.

An earsplitting explosion shook the Raikage's tower.

* * *

"Da..dahhh…dddaaaaaahhhhh?" was Naruto's intelligent response after Reibane's speech. 

Leaning on her hands, Tsunade sighed. "So you are saying, that Shingen Kumo is –"

"Shingen Uchiha Kumo," interjected Reibane, impervious to the Godaime's glare.

"– an ambassador from Kumogakure…and 99 of the people who came to the hospital today with strange injuries are the result of her pranks? And she was probably using a pseudonym like 'Watari Chiharu' or 'Erimura Kansei' or 'Manchi Goshikobi'? And because the Raikage knew that this would happen he sent _you_ to make sure that she completes her diplomatic mission?"

Reibane nodded enthusiastically. "She left Kumogakure about two weeks ago, actually, but I estimate that she didn't arrive in Konoha until this morning."

Tsunade sighed. It made sense. For the past week and a half Konoha had been receiving reports of all sorts of odd things happening in the Fire Country's countryside, and the route of trouble did seem to be making a bee line straight for Konoha.

"So then it was this…Shingen-san who kidnapped Gai-sensei?" Tenten asked.

"And I was punched by this…Shingen bastar – I mean girl!" Jiraiya shouted.

"Then she was the one who sent out those invitations…" Kakashi mused.

"I don't get it…" Naruto whined, "what does this have to do with me?" His face turned blue, then yellow, and continued to transform.

"And she's an Uchiha…" mused Neji, "a real Uchiha? Another survivor?"

The door to Godaime's office opened, and in stepped a bruised, dirty, scowling Team 10. Following not so far behind was Shikamaru, who stepped aside as Kotetsu and Izumo walked in carrying a distraught, screeching, disheveled Ino, who fell onto the floor and gapped as Sakura walked in covered with dried orange juice, who then let out a shriek when she saw Sasuke walk in wearing the janitor's uniform.

Reibane looked from one to the other. "Ahhh…I see Kumo-chan has been very busy today."

* * *

"Wow…" muttered Kumogakure council member one as the Raikage turned off the TV and ejected the video tape. 

"Wow…" agreed the other members.

"That Kumo is one good prankster if I've ever seen one," remarked member two.

Member two received _looks._

"She's never played a prank on you?" asked several others suspiciously.

"No!" member two chuckled, feeling the world thump at his shoulders, "of course not! Has she played a prank on any of _you?_"

"No." "Nope!" "Never!" "No!"

Ryoki thought to himself, brushing through the fat cat's fur. _It's not so funny when she plays on a prank on you…but it's alright so long as it's on the Konoha shinobis. That Kumo, she actually taped all of that!_

"You know," suggested one member, "I bet we could make a TV show out of this. Our people love it when they see other people suffer."

Slowly, the members glanced from one to the other. Well, Kumogakure council could always use more funds.

It was a VERY GOOD idea.

* * *

Kumo hummed as she sucked on the lollipop. Who knew that being _the_ Uchiha Sasuke was so fun? That woman practically threw the candy at her, screeching something like: "Oh! IT'S SO WONDERFUL THAT YOU FINALLY GRACE MY SHOP WITH YOUR PRESENCE, SASUKE-SAMA!" Reibane had said, that in the circumstance where you find yourself being mistaken for somebody you aren't, who happens to be very popular with the locals, you should swindle everything you can and make a run for it. 

Then Kumo sensed something in the air that wasn't quite right, that threatened to spoil her mood. She lifted her eyes to the Hokage tower and saw the fog of mysteries swirling round and round.

She cursed.

_Speaking of Reibane…_

* * *

Ten minutes later, Kumo found herself in the Godaime's office, surrounded by rage-faced Konoha shinobis and two sannin, with the fog of enigmas whirling in a corner of the office, Reibane smiling at her. 

_He did say, once, that the consequences of your actions always catch up to you…_ Kumo mused, and found the present situation very amusing, for she had forgotten completely why everyone glared at her so.

"Kumo…" Reibane began. "I do believe that you have…taken this diplomatic mission the wrong way. After all, you are not here to kill off the Konoha shinobi. Did Ryoki-kun not give you a list of things you shouldn't do before you left?"

Kumo grinned, but she had no idea where he was going with this. "Ahn? What list?"

"So…" Reibane plowed on, "Godaime-sama and I have conferred…and agreed that for every prank you pulled and every yen you swindled, you are to serve Konoha for ten days."

"Hai!" replied Kumo. She couldn't see what was so wrong with this.

And then…

"But you have to answer to the individuals on your own, of course," explained Reibane, "including all those people in the countryside. I'm sure the farmer didn't appreciate it when you made his rabbits fly, or when the chickens laid over a thousand eggs and the eggs hatched with two chickens each, or when the cows trampled over the local magistrate's home, or when the nice lady in the woods woke up one morning and found her home on a giant beanstalk."

Kumo complied. She still couldn't see what was so bad about it.

That is, until Reibane took his leave…and the Konoha shinobis closed in.

"Oh…" muttered Kumo. She really should have taken extra precautions and used a bunshin…but she didn't have any chakra left, and right now, the Konoha shinobis could care less if she was the third last Uchiha in the world.

Reibane's advice was always good advice.

_The consequences of your actions always catch up to you._

_

* * *

A week later…_

The walls of the Hyuuga mansion was impenetrable by Konoha's street noises, but people on the other side of the wall could well hear odd sounds coming from the mansion. In the meantime, Hyuuga Hiashi closed his eyes and tried to ignore the sounds from the kitchen, but when a mountain of pots crashed down, his Byakugan blazed.

Similarly, Neji felt a vein pulsing as he took his cup of tea from a Hinata who looked paler than usual. Two seconds later, the Hyuuga prodigy shrieked as a fountain of molten tea burst from his lips. "KUMO!" Outbursts like this was very rare, almost unthinkable, for Neji, but since three days ago he abandoned his cool exteriors and settled for flame throwers.

"Yes?" The newest maid of the Hyuuga residence peeked around the corner and gave Neji a lopsided grin, which she undoubtedly copied from the copy-nin Kakashi.

Hiashi calmly sipped his tea – and spit it out. Not only was it hot, it tasted of pig and age-old blood.

Two pairs of Byakugan centered on one Shingen (Uchiha) Kumo as Hiashi (with more experience in hanging onto the stoic look) fired her.

"And don't come back," warned the head of Hyuuga household, knowing very well that these words were like dust in a windy desert.

Kumo bowed, and walked out of the Hyuuga household.

Ten minutes later, Hyuuga Hiashi would realize that Kumo also took five thousand yen and several very valuable vases with her.

* * *

Uchiha Sasuke walked down the streets, very annoyed. 

He stopped at Ichiraku. "One bowl of miso ramen."

Nothing happened. So he looked up from his brooding and gave the waitress a most convincing glare, which had become an hourly routine ever since the whole village found out that a Shingen Kumo had been prancing the streets as pretty-boy Erimura Kansei who in turn decided to try out the looks of Uchiha Sasuke.

"Oh, sorry," Ayame apologized quickly and gave Sasuke an extra helping of miso ramen, "I was just…you know…checking to make sure…"

Every shop had learned their lessons. Shingen Kumo was a particularly good swindler even by swindler standards.

_And she's an Uchiha._ Sasuke thought bitterly. Although she couldn't use the Sharingan, there was no mistaking those characteristic Uchiha looks. Deep, deep down, he was also somewhat happy that there was another Uchiha besides him but…_She's a disgrace to the Uchiha name!_ He wondered what Itachi would do if he found out.

_One more escaped than you thought, Itachi._

Although she was by large a supreme jutsu expert and the ANBU Captain of Cloud since age eleven, her main trade included all the shady things that no Uchiha would ever do. Naruto, on the other hand, had exploded like a time-bomb when he realized that she _really_ was an Uchiha. But people these days had the amazing ability to ignore your bloodline and skip onto the part of your resume where it says that you were a prankster, and so almost everyone in Konoha who had been a part of the "Kumo fiasco" quietly accepted that she was an Uchiha and violently paid her back for her pranks.

But once Kumo regained her chakra, she was more…elusive.

First she rebuilt the Yamanaka house, but all the doors were glued shut and the stairs caved in when too much weight walked on them. Later, the Yamanakas followed a low buzzing sound to find that Kumo had built in a beehive just below Yamanaka Inoichi's bed. No wonder why the bees never quite left their house.

Next Kumo landed a job as Team Gai's temporary replacement teacher…and Team Gai was never quite the same afterwards, for one…

"Sasuke-san!"

Sasuke turned around, dreading at what he might see…and thumped his head as curly-haired Lee flashed him a huge, shiny grin. Even people two blocks away were temporarily blinded.

Sasuke wasn't so sure on the details of what Kumo had done to Team Gai, but after the first lesson Tenten was sent to the hospital and officially labeled as mentally traumatized while Lee pranced around the streets doing absolutely nothing, and Neji mysteriously failed to show up for training everyday.

Kumo had also volunteered to help at the hospital, but word has it that Tsunade-sama punched her to kingdom come the moment she spoke her request.

Four days ago, the more amiable jounins attempted to make friends with Kumo, but Kumo's idea of bonding was to fill everyone full of alcohol and throw them into the women's bath house.

_Even later_, Kumo wormed her way into a spot at the Konoha Interrogation Squad, and Morino Ibiki would've absolutely loved to keep her if she didn't _accidentally_ mistake a couple of interrogation squad members for prisoners.

Three days ago, Kumo landed a job as a Hyuuga maid, or rumor has it that she blackmailed Hanabi into hiring her. Hanabi, who had absolutely no idea just who Kumo was, hired her on the spot.

And…two days ago, a group of women at the bath house saw a white-haired, red jacket man peeking. Two minutes later, a scream came, the peeping tom vanished…and all the women saw was a Sasuke-ish boy walking out of the bath house.

And…one day and a half ago, Ebisu closet pervert walked into Konoha gates with a pair of crutches.

_This is insane._ Thought Sasuke.

He felt a chill slithering down his spine.

He turned. He looked. He spotted Sabaku no Gaara march down the street, gourd strapped to the back, and a puppet-less Kankuro in toll.

* * *

Far, far away from Konoha, in deep woods where people dreaded to tread, two shadows leapt into a clearing and waited. Finally, a third shadow arrived, landing without so much as a sound, and smirked. 

"Well, Itachi, what are you going to do about that little Cloud nin?"

Kisame might as well have glared at the third arrival, but Itachi cut in. "It does not interfere with our plan. Our job is to collect the youma."

"Sure, sure." The man rubbed his hands underneath a black and red cloak. "But just so you know, she appears to be quite the kunoichi."

Itachi stared at the Akatsuki in the shadow stoically, but something in those eyes hinted that he was not about to let the matter of the second Uchiha survivor drop, either.

"Let's go!" Kisame said impatiently, and three Akatsuki took off toward Kirigakure.

TBC

* * *

Author's note: 

For clarification purposes, I shall say this: it took so long for Team 10 to reach Konoha because Kumo stopped to lay down a loooot of traps for them.

And if you are wondering just what exactly happened to Ebisu…well…I'm not telling, mwahahah!

This story will gradually progress to a more serious plot, and I might do pairings…

And no, Kumo can't use the Sharingan, and unless I change my mind she probably never will. The reason for that will be revealed in later chapters.

Lastly, will Kankuro get his puppet back? Kumo has grown awfully attached to it, and one Sabaku no Gaara might not be enough to convince her to return the puppet.

Next chapter: Gaara confronts Kumo, and a cry for help from the Village of Hidden Mist as Akatsuki attacks!


	7. Chapter 6

Finally here…AT LAST! The GAARA CHAPTER!

It's all Gaara goodness, everyone! (sorry if he's a bit out of character)

So, without further ado, enjoy!

* * *

Disclaimer: Naruto…urrgggg…yes, I don't own Naruto 

**

* * *

Chapter 6 The Table Turns (and Not Just Once)**

_When it's Kumo vs. Gaara_

* * *

A pack of wolves sped across the Hidden Mist borders, unhindered by the presence of Akatsuki outposts 

In a room lit only by the sunlight, a heavily cloaked man sat at his table thoughtfully, brush dangling a finger's length from the scroll. Beside him, huddled in the corner, two children watched the trees, one with fear, the other with guarded curiosity.

After a time, the latter put an arm around the shuddering boy. No words passed between them, for mere words could not describe the tension suffocating this room.

A drop of ink splashed onto the scroll. The man looked down, sighed, and set down the brush.

"Misty Egg Rolls with a side of skewered eel and de-salted seaweed, anyone?"

And, in a small gesture, but a quite large way, the tension dispersed.

* * *

A cool breeze floated past Konoha as Team Gai's Rock Lee, the Beautiful Green Beast of Konoha, the awesome guy known for his blinding teeth and steely bowl-shaped haircut, ran across the meadows, a setting sun shining upon him, and cried tears of utter joy. 

"GAI-SENSEI! YOU ARE BACK!" sobbed Lee as he crashed into the arms of his mirror-image, whose face retained just a tiny tint of purple from having been stuck in a sack for nine hours in Ichiraku's storeroom closet.

"Oh god…" Tenten smacked her forehead, earning a warning look from Neji.

Quietly, the Hyuuga thought to himself, _Is she really alright?_ After all, Tenten had only been released from the hospital yesterday after she recovered from the blasted Cloud-nin's "lessons."

And speaking of the devil…Neji's face changed to an ugly shade of red as the Cloud-nin, now officially known as Uchiha Kumo, walked across the field…and inconspicuously stepped on something.

Byakugan flared. Neji waited in anticipation.

Ten minutes passed.

"Lee! The flame of youth burns bright in you!"

"Gai-sensei! Even though it took you a week to get out of the hospital, you are still the BEAUTIFUL GREEN BEAST OF KONOHA!"

"Lee!"

"Oh god…not again…"

Nothing happened.

Then Uchiha Kumo turned to wave at Neji, and Neji saw black.

* * *

Some people are fascinated with the universe, how the planets revolve, how life evolves. Others have a deep infatuation with certain animals, like rats that can bite your fingers off or cats that are way to smart for your good. And then there's other people, people like Kankuro, who makes a puppet one day and gets married to the puppet for life. 

Said Sunagakure shinobi sweated in his thick, black (which absorbs lots of sunlight), fuzzy (even more heat absorption) suit _without _his puppet as he sat down at Konoha Diet, Konoha's second best restaurant, to dine _without_ his puppet and _with_ Gaara, the Kazekage who is on everyone's last-people-you-would-want-to-dine-with list.

Kankuro had wanted to find the Cloud-nin as soon as possible, but…

_Flashback, half an hour ago…_

_The Godaime sighed. "Uchiha Kumo…a few days ago, she joined up the Konoha ANBU Interrogation Squad, but where she has been since then, I do not know."_

_Kankuro whined, "But doesn't she live somewhere! I need my puppet-" He stopped at Gaara's death glare and the uncorking gourd. "I mean…I really want Karasu back," he said with as much Sunagakure dignity as possible, eyeing the gourd warily._

"_It's understandable," replied Godaime, also watching the gourd, with a fist that looked like it could throw a very good punch any minute, "but nobody knows where Kumo lives."_

_Flashback ends_

Thus Gaara and Kankuro went to the ANBU Interrogation Squad and discovered most of the ANBU absent due to "a series of unfortunate accidents". Then, Morino Ibiki, who seemed to have a few more pox-like scars on his skin than Kankuro remembered, invited them in with a weird smile on his face for a cup of tea…and told them absolutely nothing about Kumo while putting what _looked like_ tea but _tasted like_ blood in the Sand sibling's teacups. They were also sitting in the ANBU Interrogation Room, which was not a nice place for Kankuro if Karasu wasn't parasiting on his back.

"Your orders, my lords!" said the waiter as he set down two plates in front of Kankuro and one before Gaara. Then he eyed the Kazekage's gourd, eyed the Kazekage's black lined eyes, and scuttled away.

Kankuro stabbed the cabbage in his plate dubiously that looked suspiciously rotten. _Curse menus that don't have photos!_ He thought angrily. _And curse Kumo!_

According to rumors, due to the recent Nara clan food poisoning episode, Konoha Flame had to close down…or until Kumo finally repaired the three holes that she put into the restaurant walls when her experiments exploded on the street outside. The experiment, according to rumors, had involved a sannin named Jiraiya and a closet pervert named Ebisu. Not much either was known, other than that both were staying in the Konoha Hospital Intensive Care Ward as of this moment.

Before picking up the cabbage, Kankuro peeked at Gaara's culinary choice.

His eyes popped out. _Since when!_ The plate before Gaara was licked clean, not even sauce was left. _Powerful shinobis and their secrecy._ Thought Kankuro, bitterly.

He heard a sudden shout of: "NEJI-KUN!" (With the voice of a face that matched with green spandex suit, but not quite a name) Out of the corner of his eyes, he spotted a familiar Hyuuga Branch House member walking quickly into the restaurant, prying a bowl-haired, green-spandexed, flashing teethed boy off of him.

When the spectacle of throwing-green-spandex-out-of-Konoha-Diet ended with a round of applause by patrons who had been temporarily blinded by the shinny teeth, Kankuro finally bit down on the cabbage leaves, and tasted something even more bitter. So he cursed like a proper pajama-clothed, puppet-less guy who's afraid of his younger brother.

* * *

The Hyuuga Branch House member who had been dawdling at random tables got up and walked out, opening a little notebook and scrabbled something suspiciously like _Sabaku no Gaara_ in tiny handwriting.

* * *

"Why…" groaned Hyuuga Neji, dangling from a tree, over a huge bonfire, fifty miles away from Konoha, watched by one of Kumo's grinning bunshins.

* * *

Back in Konoha, the real Kumo-as-Neji hid in Team Gai's training field and thought, _why is the Kazekage here?_ She really did think hard. There had been some memory involving face-paint man, but that was all in the murky past buried fifty miles in dust. 

Then she considered spying on the Kazekage even further. "But what a scary aura!" she thought aloud, unconsciously loosing the Henge. It was such a bother to be mistaken for Neji by LEE, of all people, fifty times in one day.

Tattoo-forehead had the kind of black, admonishing aura that Orochimaru would kill to possess (and Orochimaru is about halfway there, but _nobody_ is as masterful in the deadly aura as Gaara). There is, if Kumo remembered correctly, an underground school in Kumogakure (conveniently situated under the Raikage tower) that people know to _not know_ about, which teaches all the shinobis who stumble there how to emit the _deadly aura_ (those shinobis are often ones who had quite a traumatizing conversation with the Raikage, and decided that it was better to follow an advice than ignore it). ((Nobody knows how Hanashiba Ryoki does it, but there's the White Ryoki, who's a coward and a kid in heart; and then there's Black Ryoki, who makes cowards out of other people while some never see him, or _anyone_, ever again))

But, Kumo realized, it would be purely challenging to tail someone who, for once, was neither an Uchiha/Hyuuga bastard or a closet pervert, or just plain boring (or extremely odd) Konoha shinobis.

And what about that huge gourd?

According to Reibane, somewhere in the Wave Country people came up with the proverb "curiosity killed the catfish". Thus, Kumo reasoned, if she didn't turn into a catfish, then she was OK.

Such reasoning was like writing "**KILL ME**" in big, bold, attractive letters across your forehead and flaunting it in front of a blood-thirsty Sabaku no Gaara with his gourd and _without_ any Naruto to stop him. The good news is, Kumo had at least _some_ shinobi talent as to not get killed…which is precisely why after stalking the Kazekage down four blocks, when she ran into a solid _something_, she looked up and grinned cheerily into a pair of green eyes with black lines. "Might I sell you a pack of Konoha Flame popcorn?" she asked, producing a bag of moldy things that possessed the white, yellow, and sometimes brown colors of popcorn with butter.

But she didn't know that the Kazekage had been looking for someone, specifically _someone_ who resembled Sasuke, even more specifically a _someone_ named Uchiha (Shingen) Kumo who usually stalked strangers _and_ grinned when caught. Then there was Kankuro, gapping, gagging, and doing lots of other g-words all at once, including gripping Gaara's sleeve and gointing (gargling and pointing) at Kumo.

No emotion flickered across the Kazekage's emotion whatsoever, but Kumo could just detect a small amount of vibration from his gourd that signaled: 1) anger, 2) satisfaction, and 3) bloodlust. None of which were quite appealing, but as it occurred, Kumo was used to Konoha shinobis, and so didn't know, that unlike Konoha shinobis, Sunagakure shinobis NEVER fell for a stupid excuse like that. (unless you were Kankuro, who has been swindled since the day he was born) Particularly Gaara, who was impenetrable to begging and deaf to excuses.

The Kazekage glared.

"Errr…popcorn?" Kumo asked hopefully. She'd heard _rumors_ about the Kazekage from Kumorokunikunin's number one gossiper, Hanashiba Ryoki.

The Kazekage continued glaring, but now his gourd uncorked…

She heard a small click, and to her puzzlement it appeared that her invention, the chakra-restriction wristband, had been snapped around her wrist. "Ohhhh…"

And, for the first time ever in her life, Uchiha (Shingen) Kumo (or Shingen ((Uchiha)) Kumo, however you want to put it, since the great debates of yesterday failed to determine which family name was more important) saw black _with_ a halo of stars and birds circling her head.

* * *

Sabaku no Gaara gave off no _emotion_ whatsoever as his sand formed a Sabakukyu around the Uchiha troublemaker. 

Kankuro did his own inner dance of triumph (although he did next to nothing apart from an attempted break-in into Kumo's secret lab ((and landed in the Sunagakure hospital)) whereas Gaara spent half an hour and easily found the C-R wristband sealed in a pickle jar _along with pickles_).

* * *

In a very dark room, where the shadows were indeed the darkest of dark and furniture looked like black bits of anything that is dark, a dark form wiggled against what appeared to be a huge anthill cocooned around it. But the anthill was absolutely _impenetrable_. 

"-!" swore Kumo, who had been brought up by the kind of people that swore all the time but hit her when they heard _her_ swear.

And the sands shifted a little at her struggle, only to form an even tighter ring around her throat that left a miniscule amount of space for air (in fact, almost zero). Contradictory to earlier situations in ANBU service where she'd ended up like this, Kumo didn't really know what to do when the sand was _alive_ and a pair of very dark, malicious green eyes glowered at her from the Dark.

"Eeeeeeeehhhhhh…" Kumo gagged, a bit slow with the pounding headache, "popcorn?"

The glower transformed into a glare.

Someone scuttled in the dark. "Ask her…err…ask her about Karasu." The voice had a hopeful ring to it that hoped for survival more than "Karasu".

A dark, dead, dagger-like voice _slithered_ out, "Where is the puppet that you stole in Kumogakure, just three weeks ago?" Meanwhile, the eyes disappeared a moment from Kumo's view as it turned, presumably, to glare at the requester.

Right that moment something else happened that never happened to Kumo before. She had a flash of premonition, and her basic admonishing alarms of responsibility and memory-loss (that had been dead since the day a frantically escaping Kumogakure ANBU dropped her on her head) came to life.

"Eerrrgggghhh…" Kumo felt the sands squeeze her windpipe painfully. _The Sharingan would be useful right now_. She thought, but since she couldn't do the Sharingan, it was as close to wishful thinking as she would ever get. "What puppet?"

That, apparently, had been the wrong answer, as the sands _jerked_ her arms in the way that arms should _never_ be pulled. Dimly, Kumo could feel an arm tear, but people would be amazed that what they think happened that really didn't happen when you are in an enclosed space with a psychopath interrogating you. This interrogator, especially, was a man for few words.

"Think." Was all he said, very quietly, and it really made Kumo _think_. Again, people would be amazed at the power of one word from the mouth of a psychopath. It had more _bulk_ and _dark thoughts_ to it than any Uchiha two worded answers and Hyuuga denials could ever achieve. This was the kind of one-word conversation style that any Akatsuki member would die to learn.

"Eeerrrrggggghhhhhhhhh……….." Kumo stared straight ahead, trying to affirm the shape of a gourd. Instinct for survival kicked in, and abruptly she realized that if she wanted to live, she had better remember, and remember _fast_. "I think…puppet…" Yes, there had been a puppet. On the puppet's back was a messy writing in colorful crayon: "Karasu, Sabaku no Kankuro's puppet, if lost, please send to Sunagakure tower by mail and DON'T trouble the Kazekage for this". That same puppet had last been used to give Konohamaru a spanking, and then…

"Oohhhh…." Kumo mouthed, sweat forming on her forehead. "Do you want the puppet in one piece or disassembled?" And she counted…one, two, three…

"WHAT!"

The sand squeezed tighter, and for the second time in one day and her whole life, Kumo blacked out.

* * *

After a march through Konoha above, below, and inside sand to a disassembled puppet, Kumo woke up in the Konoha Hospital, feeling the oppressive weight of the C-R wristband. Oddly enough, she had a visitor, and _he_ was _Sasuke_. 

"-!" Kumo swore again, earning a look from Sasuke that clearly said: those who cannot even swear properly are definitely beneath me, despite how much better your jutsus are, because right now you can't use any, or a certain Hokage will personally make your life MISERABLE.

After the initial shock, Kumo eyed the Uchiha surreptitiously. "Errrggghh…"

"Tch," said the Uchiha prodigy, and marched out of the hospital room, leaving Kumo to wonder what the –! _that_ had been about.

But the wonderment did not stay short. As Kumo snuck out of the Konoha Hospital, leaving a gagged janitor in the closet with a hospital gown, she did a lot of calculations. The C-R W had to come off, of course, and then…

"Vengeance" was not a word in Kumo's usual vocabulary, but after thirty minutes of dwelling with a psychopath in a very dark room, certain words like "vengeance" and "war" and "apricots" had been added to the specific part of the brain governing words (which, for Kumo, hadn't been reopened in a very long time).

Thus, she thought, with the single-mindedness of an Uchiha who had just discovered "revenge," _This calls for war, and vengeance shall trounce upon him as the apricots trounce the ants._ She _had_ seen an ant disappear under a fallen apricot, once, and something as small as that _had_ to be crushed by an apricot, yeah?

And now a plan…

She colored slightly, but the pink hue was fairly visible on her normally pale-as-ghost face.

She couldn't go back to _that._ ANYTHING but that! _The shame! I shall be the laughingstock of every licensed prankster in the world!_ But after a short debate with lots of groaning and banging of finger-sized angels and devils, Kumo walked into a dilapidated bookstore and headed directly for the dustiest section of the bookstore, where magical, rare, and sometimes deadly books were _always_ known to be found but for some reason _ignored_ until a boy or girl who knew absolutely zip about dusty shelves and books found the _Book of Dark Arts_ or other works like that. (and quite often these books end up as the wedge in a _very drastic_ change in the course of history)

In this case, however, Kumo pulled out _Aa Guydes on Prancs_, carefully held her head back as a fountain of one hundred year old milk shot out from the cover, and opened the flap.

She hadn't read this book since six, but, as they say, urgent times call for intellectual reversal.

Her finger found "How to Wrecc Venginces", and she smirked in the way that only an Uchiha on the road of revenge can smirk. Had Ryoki been here, he would have pointed out just how similar Kumo was to the Uchiha prodigy who was forever chasing after Itachi (until he got hit in the stomach with a Rasengan, and then was clubbed over the head by a copy-nin, and then he fell in love with Sakura because she was no longer in love with him ((the last part isn't really true, by the by. It's really just the imagination of overly romantic Konoha citizens (((but, theoretically, if there's an Uchiha out there like Kumo, then _anything_ can happen))) )) ).

* * *

"The dead of night descends upon Konoha," said Kumo conversationally, haranguing Naruto as he devoured his ramen. The blonde had been the only one in Konoha who _didn't_ learn a lesson through the "Kumo fiasco". This, Kumo reflected, was a good point, because 1) he's easier to work with, and 2) she understood him very well since a certain Niburo back in Kumogakure was _frightening_ similar. 

"Vot?" asked Naruto, the question mark almost visible.

Kumo, feeling obligated to bring a level of maturity into this conversation, sighed. "No, not literally, Naruto-kun. I'm just saying that it's getting dark."

"Oh…" Naruto muttered, but Kumo could tell that nothing was really getting into that skull.

"Soo….we were talking about your…friend, yes?"

"Which one?"

Sigh. "Eerrr..Gaera, I think, the sand guy?"

"Oh! _Gaara_!"

"Yes, Gaara…hmm…you were talking about his…errr…jutsus, yes?"

"Hah!" Naruto's chest puffed, "but I'm better!"

"Of course, of course," Kumo muttered, "but please, tell me more about Gaara…as you know, for…research purposes to suit the needs of Kumogakure diplomatic measures in the future, yes." Her eyes were _glowing_.

* * *

That night, Kumo labored in the unofficially rented kitchen of Konoha Flame. And no, there were not any floating bodies in liquids or deadly-looking liquids _at all_, and nobody on the streets heard the explosions or saw chunks of Kinjutsu books as well as bloodline research notes fly out. As it goes, _this sort_ _of thing_ only happened when Kumo faced a particularly nasty challenge, and decided to revert back to the old ways of "shinobi-eat-shinobi".

* * *

In the Thunder Country, Hanashiba Ryoki considered whether or not to let Black Ryoki out, and decided against it. Nevertheless, having a thunderstorm thumping your back through a hole in the wall (which was there curtsy of Kumo's video tape package), was enough to give even White Ryoki a sour turn. 

Then he heard the howl of wolves, and, without thinking, jumped out through the hole.

One of the lessons that they taught in the Kumogakure underground academy was that ninjas _improvise_.

* * *

The glorious morning sun unfurled a new dawn upon Kumo as she strutted toward the Kazekage's lodging. Konoha Inn was quite the popular place for travelers. (as it happens, any business in Konoha with 'Konoha' in its name was very likely to sell, whereas enterprises like Ichiraku survived Social Darwinism only with the help of single-minded people like Naruto) 

She dropped a brown package into the flowerpot as the register lady dozed on the counter, and quickly marched up the stairs.

Then the world went ka-boom.

Even before the dust cleared, Sabaku no Gaara already arrived at the scene, gourd strapped on his back. A few seconds later, Kankuro ambled down the stairs, and the dust was still making pretty patterns in the air. Not knowing what to do until the dust settled (and presumably the offender is still there), the two Sand-nins waited, Kankuro with his newly repaired Karasu.

Someone cackled, but it sure didn't came from anywhere near the dust-filled region. In fact, to Kankuro's growing horror that cackle sounded _terribly_ familiar, with the initial U.S.K., or S.U.K. dashing through his memories and Karasu flopping on his back.

He turned his head, slowly (NEVER turn your head slowly when alerted of impending doom nearby. That is a lesson which many that had encounters with Kumo WILL learn).

He could merely make out the flurry of the impossible, revered, legendary DOUBLE-SEAL SIMULTANEOUS JUTSU (which is exactly as its name says – where the shinobi performs two different hands seals _at once_). Only one shinobi in history had been able to do it, and that guy had _twenty_ fingers.

Beside Kankuro, Gaara's head whipped around _very fast_, but it was still too late, for a Kumo without the C-R W plus newly acquired Kinjutsus utter disaster for the one who pissed her off in the first place.

And then Kankuro experienced the overly unpleasant feeling of someone who was being peeled apart layer by layer, mashed under a heavy cement block, and sent off for the meat-packaging assembly line.

* * *

When Gaara could see once more, he noticed two things about himself. 1) he was eagle-spread on the dusty carpets of Konoha Inn, 2) a Kankuro-shaped hole was next to him, but the Kankuro in question was nowhere to be found, 3) he didn't feel so well, and for once he _couldn't_ hear Shukaku in his head, and, finally, 4) he was going to kill the Uchiha for the reasons listed below: 

a. His gourd was gone

b. There was some sort of gooey substance, a cross between saliva and the stuff that comes out of a spider's _back_ end, all over him

c. He got a good look of himself in the mirror (to check for abnormalities just in case), and realized, for the first time in his life, with horror that his body had reverted to the looks of a four-year-old, and that this was also not _his_ body, but Kankuro's. And if so…

"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" screamed somebody in Gaara's voice who Gaara knew really wasn't _the_ Sabaku no Gaara, but was nevertheless strewn with signs of a potential Shukaku break-out.

* * *

After much fanfare, (and mistaking Sasuke for _somebody else_ twice) the Konoha ANBU finally found Uchiha Shingen Kumo coercing information of the Hyuuga bloodline out of Neji in a forest. Ere long, the Kumogakure kunoichi was dragged back to Konoha (somehow, and let's just skip the part where twelve out of thirteen on the ANBU team ended up in the hospital). 

This time, there was a Hokage AND a Kazekage to beat the daylights out of her. (But only until she finally reversed the double-seal simultaneous jutsu, of course) AND the two Kages would very much have liked to put Kumo into the Konoha Permanently Disabled Shinobi list if a message bird had not arrived from the Thunder Country.

As Tsunade read the message, her brows furrowed.

This was _very_ bad, and it _wasn't_ because Gaara and Kumo have begun mini-battle right here, in her office, which would need a VERY BIG reconstruction job later on.

TBC

* * *

Oh yes…Gaara…hahah! Although the Gaara-changes-body-with-somebody-else-thing has been done before, I was just way too tempted to not put it in, so there it is! 

More action and Akatsuki plots will come in later on, so read on!

Next chapter: first Cloud-Leaf joint mission ever! What will happen as two Uchihas set out for Kirigakure?


	8. Chapter 7

Chappie 7! This one has lots of long paragraphs in it and fewer dialogues than normal…but that's okay!

And if anyone is wondering why I haven't been put into the mental institution yet, well…go ask the people who tried, HAHAHAHAHAH!

note to people who tend to take things WAY too seriously, I wasn't being serious. Then again, it's kinda hard to tell with crazy people, yeah?

* * *

Disclaimer: Kishimoto owns Naruto, I'm just a fanfic writer 

**

* * *

Chapter 7 The Long Assignment**

A bird from Kumogakure fluttered into the Hokage tower, a message tied around its leg.

**Dbytaew xxbeagoi uate dabe adgeao gadddg hqwtwo ubeat itii giithe adghoeti x,se iitaoty toieahgio gtry itwar taheai hazsg phrm ,age . teagoib dbytaew adwe itii teaiagea**

_**Lesgea goeibnea**_

This is what had been written on the scroll, but what was actually _meant_, after decoding all the words and putting them into sentence structure that made sense to the common shinobi, was:

_I am hidden in Kirigakure borderline, fifty miles southwest of tower. There are three Akatsukis on the lookout: a sharkman (and the translator added in the footnote presumably Hoshigaki Kisame, otherwise can only be the seaside boogeyman), an Uchiha (footnote may be the Uchiha traitor ((upon which Shizune interrupted: "Which one?" (((because technically Itachi was a traitor for massacring his family, Sasuke was a traitor for betraying Konoha, and Kumo was a traitor for working with the long-time archenemy of Konoha – Kumogakure))) )) ), and a third, unidentified, S-class shinobi._

_Help is needed. The five tailed bijuu is threatening to break out. _

_Please, send Kumo. _

_I NEED HER._

_Truly yours_

Not the most promising way to end a letter, but it certainly showed a level of intellectual conformity that left the readers in awe. After all, who in the world used "truly yours" anymore? Only the droll-minded and the philosophers with too much time on their hands, some people reflected.

Thus Tsunade put down the letter and looked Kakashi square in the eye. "Be careful, Kakashi." And she knew he knew that she warned him against more than just the _enemy_, for sometimes people on your own team can be the death of you with a single sneeze.The warning itself was also another custom that should be trashed, but Tsunade found that reassurances usually gave the conversation a more…_dramatic_ feel. One day all the people who were present would look back and wonder, "Did she know she would never see him again?" It was common speculation by the general public, which knew as much about the _real works_ of a ninja as a cat knows about creatures that lives at the bottom of the sea, or hopes that it ever knows.

Konoha had handled more and more super S-class missions recently (which is 3 more in the newest three years than had been in previous decades ((which had 0 super S-class missions when they weren't squabbling with Cloud)) ), that Tsunade considered establishing a special rank, the HLKIA (Highly Likely to be Killed In Action) class mission, for ones that involved organizations (say, the Akatsuki, for instance) with lots of sophisticated, awesome people who also happened to have an endless capacity for villainous deeds, although once converted they make blindly loyal friends to the heroes (which, in Naruto, is seldom the case, like Gaara), and tend to show up (almost always saving the day), when the heroes are getting their asses kicked by the more tasteless villains which Fate and Dramatic License says can never be converted to good (and if you ever ask why that is so, Fate will say it's FATE, and Dramatic License just tells you that it's because these are the truly villainous villains ((but the whole world _knows_ that it's _all about_ TASTE).

And Tsunade knew a rambling train of thoughts when she thought one, but since there really wasn't a god of rambling thoughts up there, she couldn't do anything at all. That is, to say, that there isn't a god of ramblings up there, cause there _is_. And he's _everywhere_.

Tsunade pondered. It was high time that she flicked Kumo right back to where the Uchiha had come from, but certain…cultural etiquettes prevented her from simply trashing the third last Uchiha in the whole world. The village elders were also _extremely dogged_ on the subject of keeping the kunoichi here in the village. And, just last week, a letter arrived from the Guild of Licensed Pranksters, Beggars, Muggers, and Eavesdroppers to demand that Tsunade _not_ kill their number one prankster of three years straight (but apparently the guild leader hadn't so much as a hair of diplomacy on him, for the letter exploded in Tsunade's face and left her smelling of garlic juice for the next five days).

And right now, Tsunade calculated, a group of ANBU should be well on their way from a little _diplomatic talk_ with Wahi Toshikoshisoba.

"I can't believe that there's actually a guild for licensed pranksters, beggars, muggers, and eavesdroppers!" commented Shizune, who hasn't yet noticed that an underfed Tonton was nibbling sharply on her finger. "I mean – _licenses?_ What do they have for all the P&B&M&E's that don't have licenses? 'The Guild of Unlicensed Pranksters, Beggars, Muggers, and Eavesdroppers?' "

Tsunade shrugged, just as an unlicensed eavesdropper hiding in the wall behind her closet sweated, thinking, _how the hell did that damn girl know about this!_

* * *

And, in Kumogakure, all the council people thought, _How the hell did he know about this!_ as the Raikage swaggered smugly into the Kumogakure Ninja Academy basement, where the council members had been throwing a party to celebrate that the Raikage hasn't changed into Black Ryoki since Kumo left. 

Yes, the Raikage has begun employing the Guild of Stalkers, Bean Planters, and the Hopelessly Romantic, or the Guild of the StaB PHoR-omantic for short.

* * *

"I can't do that! No. No! I CAN'T!" screamed Kumo in horror. But the lobster drew closer. "Don't do this! DON'T!" She edged toward the door, but Neji barred it, Byakugan blazing, and Kurenai and Asuma were both standing guard at all the exits along with the half a dozen jounins that she chucked into the women's bath. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo – glup." And a slick piece of lobster meat slid down her throat like the gooey things going down the drainpipe when a REALLY powerful gush of Mr. Clean-Your-Sink comes to the job. 

_NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!_

Kumo blinked, and found herself sitting up in bed. "-!" she heaved. _I hate lobsters._

A presence danced in and out of her senses. Then her bedroom door crashed open as a blue blur flashed in. It stopped within inches of her bed, one kunai in each hand, three black dots revolving like lightning in scarlet orbs. The eyes looked positively like target practice, and in that familiar confused moment when there was a huge gap in memory, Kumo thought that apricots would look quite dashing if nailed to the bullseye. "Toothpicks?" she asked.

Sasuke snorted. The kunais vanished. "Keep on saying stupid things, dobe. The Hokage has summoned you to her office." His hair was dripping wet.

"Raining ants?" Kumo asked, not really acknowledging the mental gap. Her eyes were trained to the wet hair, and she wondered how it would taste if she fried it with apricots and ants. Rasen was a _master_ for exotic dishes like that.

I would put you into the shrink if you weren't an Uchiha, said the Sharingan. But Sasuke said, "Get dressed. Everyone is waiting for you."

"All the ants?" Kumo followed dreamily, and looked down to see that she donned a black pajama patterned with red and white Uchiha fans. And, due to the memories that were _still_ lagging a ways behind (by a millennium, in fact, but it was getting there), she stared at Sasuke like someone who had just seen a walking, talking teddy bear pull out a fully loaded machine gun. "Did I somehow go back in time? Did I change history so that I was never kidnapped and the Uchiha massacre never occurred, and so now I'm living in the Uchiha mansion with all the Uchihas?"

Sasuke gave her a blank stare, which could wipe off an entire continent from the face of the world. Granted, the only reason that Sasuke took her to the Uchiha house (which he spent over a week de-trapping after the "4-jounin haunted house" fiasco) was because the janitor tried to screw her head off and nurse stink-foot swore that Kumo was a travesty.

Kumo swiveled her head. "Where's Itachi, then? Shouldn't he be here?" She glanced back in time to see kunais making a magical reappearance, heading her way.

Due to the fact that Rasen had a terrible habit of surprise-attacking Kumo _everyday_ two o'clock in the morning, Kumo automatically let her arms do all the thinking.

* * *

As the last smoke puffs spiraled away, a scowling Sasuke stepped into Tsunade's room. (although Sasuke is almost always scowling ((unless he's chasing Itachi, in which case he just glares)), this scowl had a deep-scowl feel to it that sent worms up your spine ((and to those enthusiasts who love to recreate special effects as seen on TV or read in stories, DO NOT ATTEMPT)). ) 

Tsunade stared impassively as nearly everyone else shot questioning glances at the two Uchihas.

"Dobe's Grand Fireball Jutsu," explained Sasuke, a man of few words, but NEVER just one word. And one look at the two Uchihas wearing almost matching shirts said a lot about Sasuke's mood, for Sasuke didn't like to share clothes with _anyone_, even and especially if that person had threatened another round of let's-burn-the-house if no cooperation appeared.

People nodded, knowing that where Kumo was involved, only long-winded explanations would be offered (if you demanded for more), and afterwards people generally found their heads aching pretty bad. So Team Seven's copy-nin glanced back to his _Icha Icha Violence_, and Gai rubbed his throat, suddenly reminded of a very unpleasant experience in Ichiraku's closet. The last mentioned person in the room, who held Tonton in her hands, obliged to fill in the conversation gap, "Kumo-san, weren't you sent here for a diplomatic mission?"

"I was?" said a surprised Kumo.

"Oyamaru-san and I have already worked that out, Shizune," Tsunade supplied, whose gaze could topple mountains.

Then, Kumo asked the inevitable question. "Why was I in the Uchiha mansion?"

Playing the role of a shocked senior, Shizune gasped, "You don't remember!"

"Eerrr…sorta…" Kumo muttered, "something to do with Sabaku-san?"

An exchange of calculating glances passed between all the jounins. Shizune took up the lead. "You slugged a bucket of Iwagakure home-made, overnight-delivered acid at him when he was getting ready to _leave_. So he…attacked you…and you summoned some sort of urrr…_thing_…that kind of attacked both of you. But you know how Gaara-san's sand protected him, but you were…well, you were just standing there, inches away from the _thing_…"

As is the ways of jumping memories, Kumo suddenly remembered. "Black Ryoki #3?" she asked. B.R. #3 was the product of an unsuccessful attempt to clone the Raikage. It, he, or she (but Kumo was pretty sure that it was a 'he') had a violent temper and NEVER listened to orders. "Did he knock me out?" Kumo asked.

"What? Gaara-san? No! It was – "

"Ohh…so it was him…" Kumo muttered thoughtfully. One of the things that mad scientists were renowned for was death at the hands of their own creations, a type of death that had recently been the topic of a featured article in _Death Monthly_, a prominent, best-selling underground magazine in Kumogakure by a mysterious guy named Watari Chiharu. The other thing that distinguished mad scientists from normal scientists was the messy hairdo, for which Kumo could be counted out, if you also discounted that every comb endeavoring to organize her hair came away with lots of bits broken off.

"And…" Kumo asked thoughtfully, "where is he now?" (At this point, Sakura entered the room quietly, then clamped a hand over her mouth as she saw two Sasuke-kuns.)

Shizune visibly shook. "Oyamaru-san took him away."

"There were a lot of screams and blood," added Kakashi.

Then Tsunade, who felt that the conversation was heading in a direction that she really didn't have time for (because every woman has got to leave some time for beauty sleep), interjected. "Kumo, the Raikage has a new mission for you – "

"Which is why I skipped breakfast – "

" – it appears that the Akatsuki has infiltrated Kirigakure to – "

" – wore this retarded outfit, – "

" – take the bijuu, which, the good news is, has been successfully rescued out of Kirigakure by – "

" – and ran here in the _rain_ and slipped in a puddle – "

" – Yodoniku Rasen."

" – just to come – " Kumo blinked. "RASEN!"

And that was that. Without wasting further time, the Godaime snapped all six shinobi in the room to attention. "Hatake Kakashi, Maito Gai, Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura, Uchiha Shingen Kumo," she fixed them with a glare that threatened to topple more than mountains, "this is the first Cloud-Leaf joint mission in history, do you understand? You are to depart today precisely at noon." She handed Kakashi the mission folder. "And Hatake Kakashi will be the captain. Understand that this is a HLKIA class mission! (to which Sasuke blinked) I have assigned each member of this team for your capabilities to deal with the Mangekyou Sharingan."

"Itachi is involved?"

Tsunade added extra weight to her nail on Sasuke.

"But I can't use the Sharingan!" whined Kumo. "And Rasen – "

At this point Tsunade's face transformed into the ugly macho-ness of a normally refined woman about to play her trump card: the Killer.

"Sasuke. This is a trial on your loyalty to Konoha. Kumo. Live with it. If you haven't activated the Sharingan then you better learn. You will NOT ask anymore questions about this. Kakashi will explain everything to you. And Sakura," she spared her student a smile, "you are assigned as the top medic in Konoha, next to Shizune and me."

Sakura nodded, but unlike the girls of Kumogakure, Kumo noticed, the pink head wasn't swelling visibly with pride.

"What about Naruto?" questioned Sakura.

Tsunade's face darkened. "I can't let him come. It's not that I personally don't want to, but the village council has decided this." And her expression indicated that there would be no more discussion about this, much to the puzzlement of Kumo, the only one in the room who didn't know about the Kyuubi.

Then Tsunade added. "And Kumo, please stay for a moment." This indicated that everyone else should leave, without questions.

When the door closed, Tsunade focused her undivided attention on Kumo. "This is a very important mission, Kumo." She slid a piece of brown, crinkly paper toward the Kumogakure ANBU Captain. "And _this_ is a document found by BIAS on the rules of the PBME." Kumo gulped as though a cat had been stuffed down her throat. "It says here…if any member of the guild sabotages any A-S class missions, their license shall be taken away. And so…I must ask that you watch your behaviors on this mission."

"Yes," squeaked Kumo, a lot like a mouth who found that the one dangling the piece of cheese on a string looked awfully like a big furry feline that _loved_ mice, and loved them _dead_.

* * *

In the Thunder Country, Reibane lifted the teacup from his lap and sighed. "I see. I lose." 

"Of course you lose," Black Ryoki hissed murderously. As if Reibane hadn't just beat up his ass in front of a huge crowd composed by Konoha spectators, genins and academy students especially. (This puzzles some people, but a majority of children have more capacity for violence than even adults. This is due to, largely, the _innocence_ factor, where everything's okay and fun so long as you aren't the one experiencing it.)

"Any chance for a rematch?" Reibane stole a hopeful glance at the shougi board.

"Not one, fucking chance."

At this point, Thunder Country's princess screeched (presumably at the improper use of language), and ran into her room.

Black Ryoki #3 glared at the door. "That is one damn cute hime."

"Don't tell me you are a pedophile," Reibane groaned. "She's only fourteen! And she's going to be married to Lord Onawa of Iwagakure next month!" It's amazing how Black Ryoki #3 made even Reibane lose his enigmatic mystique.

"And that's one year older than _her_," mumbled B.R. #3 darkly. After spending two years floating in green liquid in a pod that's in a rather dark lab with wires running through the ceilings and metallic doors (with small, square, glass windows), people tended to _not remember_ the name that matched the face they always saw. (It's amazing how specimen suspended in liquid always faced front, and the mad scientists always loved to gawk up at it lovingly. It's even more amazing that just about every mad scientist owned a lab _exactly_ like this. ((And if anyone bothered to look through the 'Kumogakure Underground Magazine Catalogue', he would find that there is indeed a _Mad Scientist Monthly_ (((And if one dug even _further_ into the records, he would find that every month a new edition of _MSM_ is shipped to the Sound, paid by one Orochimaru))) )) )

* * *

At precisely noon, Sasuke, Sakura, and Gai arrived at the Konoha gates. True to the record, Kakashi decided to smoke-screen in five hours later, which is just one second after Kumo dropped in (with a broom stick, which she swatted Gai with and _magically_ _infused_ it with his vest). Sasuke and Sakura wondered just how the heck Kumo managed to estimate Kakashi's time so accurately. 

Only after Kumo detached the broom from Gai (and in throwing it away nearly hit Sasuke _by accident_), and Kakashi gave her a long lecture on how she shouldn't waste her chakra during HLKIA class missions, did the team _finally_ leave.

* * *

Kotetsu and Izumo exchanged glances as the five-man…three-man, two-girl team vanished into the forest. 

"Don't you think that Konoha has been rather…lively recently?" asked Izumo, ever clueless about Kumo's promise to herself the day she gazed at a dead-aired Konoha night-life.

"Maybe…" said Kotetsu, half asleep himself. When you've been watching three shinobis doing absolutely nothing for five hours, you tend to get hypnotized by Sleep.

* * *

The five-ninja team traveled quickly. Since they had begun at nightfall, Kakashi opted to wait until midnight and camp out by the Konoha borders, where the other four, including Gai, who just wanted to hear things again, huddled around the copy-nin. 

"A mission into Kirigakure to rescue the five tailed bijuu," said Kakashi, summing it up nicely in one sentence, and let the folder do all the talking. Technically, he wasn't supposed to pass it around for the other team members to see, but since it was getting rather late and he needed to catch up on reading time, what _technically_ shouldn't happen didn't matter when it's the _reality_ that's happening.

As Sakura read the coded letter, her eyebrows furrowed. "I've never seen a message coded like this before."

Kumo gave her a look. "That's because you've never been to Kumogakure Underground. It's one of the hottest blackmarket in the world, you know…all sorts of people…and stuff. There's the Guild of Codes, for example, in which everything is coded and even its name is commonly known as Pixie Hatchets. There's also the Guild of Licensed Pranksters, Beggars, Muggers, and Eavesdroppers, which I belong to" she grinned cheekily at the surrounding faces of awe "and then there's the sister guild, the Guild of Blackmailers, Insomniacs, Alcoholics, and Stalkers, more commonly known as BIAS, which really doesn't accept anyone unless he's truly a hardcore B/I/A/S. There's also the Society of Friendly Mad Scientists and the Society for Misbegotten Lab Experiments, where I sent Black Ryoki #1 and #2. Then there's schools for all sorts of stuff, in fact – "

Kakashi held up a hand. "Remember, shinobis from different countries don't tell that much about an occult…place right under your village."

To this Kumo blinked. "Yeah…but technically it's not really a part of Kumogakure. It's run by m – I mean Midori Futon, who is not a part of Kumogakure ANBU in _anyway_." In fact, Midori Futon was a registered genin in the Kumogakure shinobi book, but nobody really knows what she looks like or who she _really_ is – except Kumo, of course, who officially heads the Agency of Pretenders, where nobody really knows who anybody is except Kumo.

So the Konoha ninjas debated for a moment on what technically shouldn't happen and what really occurs, and gave a thumbs-up for Kumo to go on (for which Gai accompanied with a _blinding_ smile).

* * *

The next morning, before the rooster was even out, Konoha-Kumogakure shinobis took to the road. It could be said that all effort had been put into traveling as fast as they can, but everyone, that is, everyone except Gai, pondered something fairly serious and brain-cell consuming. 

_Itachi._ Thought Sasuke. _My brother. This is a test of my loyalty for Konoha._ But could he stay himself? He had been on the road to revenge ever since that night. He lived in the Past. Could he really change? Turn around and head toward the future?

_I'm not like them_. He looked toward Kumo, who gazed at every little passing insect with the interest of an Aburame. _And I'm not like her, either. My life can never be like theirs. I can not…Itachi. Aniki…_ And in the end, what did it all mean? Life was just life, but hatred is so strong that even Naruto and Sakura can not stop his downward spiral. _Will I betray Konoha again? To abandon the village, and go after Itachi? To go back to Orochimaru?_

He didn't know.

The whirl of emotions cut him off from the world.

* * *

Sakura gazed toward Sasuke. _Sasuke-kun._

She knew what thoughts ran through his mind. It was guessed easily.

_I will save you, Sasuke-kun_.

* * *

In some other part of the forest, Kumo thought in her head, _I will get you, Itachi_. And this was thought with the single-mindedness of a person who had nothing better to do than face a challenge that might as well involve lots of blood (and occasionally vomiting by the particularly sensitive). 

"Rasen…" she murmured. Yodoniku Rasen. Out of all the Kumorokunikunin, Kumo was most fond of the homely man, the closest image of a proper 'brother' out of all the others. He had been the only one who never swore, the only one who was ALWAYS there for her until he left them at Shingen Kaisho's death.

"Rasen…" she repeated.

Yodoniku Rasen had sent for help. No, he had specifically requested that Kumo help her. And Ryoki, presumably, had given the message one look and sent it straight to Konoha, where the Hokage decided that any business involving tailed demons might as well have a slice of Konoha participation in it.

And Rasen…it would be the first time in six years that they met.

But instead of thinking: _How much has he changed?_ Kumo thought, _I wonder if he still makes those yummy Misty Egg Rolls with skewered eel and de-salted seaweed…_

* * *

One god of angst said to another, "I _told_ you she wouldn't stay depressed that long." 

"Well," replied another god of angst sourly, "I don't believe that there are people who just can't stay sad for more than a minute!" Over the table, an exchange of godly currency took place, which made some of these gods very true to their names and others the exact opposite.

Yes. The gods of angst were placing bets.

TBC

* * *

Again, I invented a lot of things about Kumogakure in here…hope nobody actually takes these information seriously. (kinda redundant, yeah?) 

Some things in this chapter might be a bit confusing, so just ask if you don't understand something, alright?

Gaara shall return later…but that's a MUCH later. For the meantime, Itachi is preparing to grace the big screen, and Kisame is looking for the plotlines…errgggg…yeah.

Another note on the timeline of this fanfic: the Akatsuki attack on Gaara hasn't yet happened, so Sasori is still alive, and Deidara's arm is attached as of this moment.

Next Chapter: Arrival at Kirigakure. A battle of Uchihas!

Raofee


	9. Chapter 8

Yay! Itachi is finally here! And Yodoniku Rasen, one of my OCs, is also officially introduced!

Some parts of this chapter are a lot more serious than most of my writing. In fact…who knows.

Just read on and enjoy! (Oh, and you don't have to read through all that animal ranting. That was just me spilling out my opinions)

* * *

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, and pretty soon my mom's going to yell at me to go to bed. 

**

* * *

Chapter 8 Uchiha, Uchiha, Uchiha**

Yodoniku Rasen perched on a rooftop on the outskirts of a civilian village, watching the sky, pondering. _When…where…how?_ Uchiha Itachi could not possibly have found them. _He couldn't have…_ And yet he did, caught all three as easily as fish in a net. And he had wounded Rasen, too. If not for intuition, Rasen would have been trapped in the Akatsuki's Tsukiyomi. But without the Sharingan the Uchiha had done enough damage, and the capabilities of Hoshigaki Kisame were simply overwhelming. And the third Akatsuki… He did not appear at all, or Rasen would surely be dead, and the five tailed bijuu, no, Hiyari, would be suffering the same fate as the other captured jinchuriki.

"Suiken…"

The boy was gone, perhaps dead. The Akatsuki were not people who kept captives alive for long, and for those who lived, perhaps it was better to die. Kisame had dealt a severe blow to the boy's arm. Even Rasen wasn't sure if it had been sheared off completely.

Agilely, silently, he climbed back into the room, where Hiyari shifted on his futon, eyes furrowing as his concentration broke. But Rasen could see that a kunai slid back under the floorboard, and a small sigh escaped the boy's lips. They stared at each other for a long time, neither willing to break the comforting silence. Hiyari's chest heaved under a thick layer of bandages. Finally, Rasen closed the window behind him to take a seat beside Hiyari. "Are you hungry?"

Hiyari shook his head. He closed his eyes. His fists trembled, and at last he wept without shame. "I don't want anything! I just want Suiken back! I want him back!"

And Rasen pulled Hiyari closed. He was so like her, so ever like her… "I have a friend, Hiyari-chan, very much like you."

The boy's tremor faded. "How so?"

"She used to be afraid all the time, in the days when we were chased by the entire ninja world. Yet she has gotten brave. I think. And she is coming for us right now. She will help us. She will save Suiken-chan and you, and me."

A pair of mismatching eyes stared up through a thin film of tears. "_She?_ Save us? But you, you can't even – "

Rasen smiled. "One of the common misconceptions of the shinobi world, Hiyari-chan. Kunoichi are not weak." He hesitated to ruffle the boy's hair. A patch of blood was seeping through the bandage around his forehead. "I am not the most powerful shinobi in the world. She isn't, either, but Kumo-chan always sees a friend safe, trust me on that."

* * *

The sun rose above Kirigakure like a huge plate with sweet-sour sauce in it, and the little puffy clouds only served as decorations that vaguely resembled loaves of watery bread. When a blue bird swooped right across the sun, a squirrel dropped a nut onto a deer, and somewhere else a bear roared as killer bees viciously attacked its snot. The amazing properties of life indicated that even if doing such things were very likely to get you killed (such as a hunter sighting the sharp contrast of a bird-shaped shadow across the sun, aimed his crossbow, and shot it down in one bloody feathered heap), evolution somehow jumped right over the section labeled "stupidity gene" and went on to edit physical features (such as giving humans an appendix, which really didn't do much at all but is STILL THERE). The part that really kept those animals was "instinct", but Fate had its funny little way to make animals appear at the most convenient time in the storyline, and then magically fading away. (In short, "instinct" is just Fate's alibi for spontaneous happenings. Also keep in mind that somewhere out there, a group of cloaked, hooded, dead-looking beings are hovering over a large model of the world and saying to one another: "Now I think we really shouldn't have made that bird fly across the sun." And another would say, "Who really cares? It's in the BOOK OF FULES ((basically a book that dictates all the things that characterize the Fate rules)), so it must be _right_." ((This is why, when anyone try to change Fate, they can't, because Fate's got its own group of creepy, floating specters with magnifying glasses hovering over The World)). ) 

Sometimes animals were mere background stuff used to drag out time, but some other times animals that would have otherwise been dead found themselves suddenly helping the heroes on their quests (and end up dying LATER, which, due to animal instincts, is considered a good thing among the animal population that can think). For instance, a barbaric warrior out to rescue his believed noble lady lover might find himself severely starved, and so chose to gut a favorite dog (which he took in as a puppy ((which died happily to save its master)) ), and then ate it. This is the one custom that pitted the Inuzukas and about every other dog-based shinobi clan against the barbarians of some far northern country.

Common sense says that the barbaric warrior himself should be gutted since the dog was, for human-environmental interaction's sake, HIS FRIEND. However, other people might simply say that it was evolution's fault for jumping over the part in a dog's brain that made it willing to sacrifice itself for a loin-clothed man with a huge club (or, in some cases, a huge and VERY weighty sword).

Then again, there are people who confused even the Fate people just a little bit, like, say, Uchiha (Shingen) Kumo, who found a puppy and right off the bat swore as the puppy bit her REALLY hard in the neck. "TRUST ME ON THIS, -! IT!"

But the vicious little vampire puppy refused to let go of her neck. In fact, it enjoyed being able to turn the tables once in a while (it's not everyday that the vampire puppy comes across someone like Kumo, who would torture a human without thought but reacted quite pathetically when a puppy bites her ((let's just say this has something to do with Tou's fat cat)) ).

Suddenly the weight fell from her. As Kumo looked sideways, horrified at a little flying body, Uchiha Sasuke stepped out of the shadows and scoffed, "Dobe."

He didn't even have time to see the fist flying at his nose.

"IT WAS A PUPPY!"

Having the Sharingan was a big advantage, and Sasuke used it to its fullest. After recovering from the initial shock of _actually_ being punched (although the contact was no longer than a second before instinct kicked in) he activated his Sharingan and used it to glare at Kumo.

For one moment time hung in the air, a bucket of cow manure threatening to tip over as the door cracked, and then Kumo blinked very slowly, looked at the vampire puppy, and said to Sasuke: "I was going to use that."

"Does it matter that it's dead?" Sasuke shot back, putting away his kunais. Rule #2 when dealing with Kumo: NEVER assume security just because she looks mellow enough.

"The blood all leaked out," replied Kumo stonily, as Sakura walked into the clearing, eyes brightening at the sight of Sasuke. Vampire puppy blood is _very_ expensive. In fact, it could be said that even living vampire dogs were hard to come across, which might have something to do with the fact that natural evolution failed to keep on with evolving diseases, and so AIDS backed vampire-dogs to the edge of existence.

The pink head rolled her eyes. "Do we _have time_ for you experiments?" To Sasuke, she beamed a smile. "Kakashi sensei says that we hurry up. Kumo's 'breakfast' is taking too long." There was a general grumble of consent from Sasuke as he whirled to follow Sakura, already walking back.

"Errr…" Kumo hung her head, giving the vampire puppy a mournful glance. "Sorry." From the general direction where Sasuke had been headed a series of explosions rocked the woods. "See, but it's better!" brightened Kumo, "I've got your…err…vengeance, yeah!" And she completely forgot that a few minutes ago she contemplated eating/dissecting the vampire puppy.

Even a nearby squirrel dropping another nut on an oddly lifeless-looking figure with an Uchiha fan on the back of his blue shirt had no problem imagining the reactions of the angst gods.

* * *

The Konoha-Kumogakure team arrived at the Kirigakure border shortly before noon. Before them lay an expanse of quagmires with a stench that indicated at possible predecessors before the team, especially those who never came out again. 

A tiny part of her brain that actually functioned flagged a question to Kumo. _Why does it smell like Ryoki's attempt at baking cherry pie?_

Scientists in Iwagakure long ago figured out that civilians used only 10 percent of their brain while ninjas tended to use somewhere between 15-20 percent. For Kumo, that figure was almost reverse. When she's not on licensed PBME business, her brain goes to zero-mode. She's got a whole universe of her own _up there_, and no creepy, floating, robed, hooded, dead-looking boney men are going to stop her.

* * *

"I see…" muttered Sasuke. 

The group of five shinobis stood stiffly on their individual branches, staring at the single beam that was the only thing erect from Rasen's hideout.

"They must have been found." Sakura clenched her fist. _Akatsuki…Itachi…_ It was a memory that no one in Konoha wished to dwell on. Months ago Sakura joined the Sasuke-retrieval mission as a medic, and they had met the Akatsuki halfway. _Had they not had other businesses, we would all be dead_, she thought. She glanced at Kumo, who had a superficial grin plastered on her face.

No. Look closer. It was a maniac grin of someone who has rediscovered "vengeance" in prodigious amounts.

A flash of silver waved before her eyes. Kakashi had darted out front and spoke without looking back, "Be careful, the Akatsuki might be here."

"Or they might not," Kumo mouthed, and was in the middle of the wreckage before Sakura had time to blink, hands whirling in such speed that Sakura couldn't make out a single seal.

"Ku – "

Kakashi held Sakura back. "If she's exposed, the rest of us better fan out. Since you are the medic, it's better that you stay with me for now." Saying this, he performed a blur of handseals and vanished with Sakura.

Sasuke didn't even have to look around to acknowledge Gai's departure. His Sharingan wheels spun, but detected no sign of any enemies. _And if I was Itachi, would I be found so easily?_ He thought in bitter mockery.

Then Kumo turned around in his direction. "Follow me." It was a command. It was a tone that would have made the Uchiha elders proud. The coldness, the _negativity_ of her voice, had been honed to perfection in that brief moment of Uchiha reconciliation.

* * *

And at that moment, Sakura, watching in a bush while Kakashi leisurely paced his reading time, thought to herself. _That's an UCHIHA'S VOICE!_ And she wondered, _Has Kumo-san finally grown up?_

It was a possibility. It was a possibility.

Suddenly Kakashi's book slammed shut. Sakura did a mental flip as her brain registered that Kumo had disappeared.

* * *

Rasen blinked at the sunlight. Hadn't the window been closed? 

Adrenaline shot through his veins. Carefully maintaining an even breath, he rose from the futon and, raising a chakra veil around him, flashed through over a hundred handseals. At last, when he heard a small chuckle, he darted out the window.

Hiyari stood in the middle of the road, his back facing Rasen.

He wasn't alone.

On the road were Hoshigaki Kisame and Uchiha Itachi. In a horrible moment Rasen realized that the lump to the side of the road was Suiken.

_Hiyari-chan._ And that was all Rasen had time to think before he performed the Kagebunshin jutsu and went after Hiyari.

But Itachi was faster, without taking his eyes off Rasen, who had his eyes averted, he reached out and lifted the boy vessel to his feet. With a sinking sensation Rasen changed his direction in midway and dragged Suiken's body out of the line of fire, just in time for a bunshin's shuriken shower swoop for Kisame. In that same instant, the real Rasen charged directly for Itachi and Hiyari.

A third man donning the black and red cloak of Akatsuki appeared on the road, just in time for Rasen's delayed jutsus to surface.

The world exploded in white light.

Rasen looked about the white world of Hiyomi. It was a genjutsu crafted specifically to counter Itachi's Mangekyou Sharingan. _So long as the chakra interference is tuned, his Sharingan should not affect me_, Rasen thought. But even without the Sharingan Itachi was a formidable, no, deadly shinobi, and the presence of two other Akatsukis only served to raise the danger.

He felt Hiyari's throat in his hand, and quickly he dropped the boy. The placement exchange had also worked. And, as the glaze vanished from Hiyari's eyes, Rasen nodded approval to his newest invention. _The genjutsu release designed to a new level, specifically to counter genjutsu generated by the Sharingan_.

And there had been one last delayed jutsu. As all three Akatsuki vanished from their spot, Rasen felt a cold, tinkling sensation running up his arms.

_Pop_

He looked up, dreaded anticipation on his face, but there were two hands clinging to him and one did not belong to Hiyari.

He was back on the road outside the hut, but Uchiha Itachi was also there, and without the Hiyomi's chakra interference, Rasen's great mistake in looking into the Mangekyou Sharingan exacted its price.

And in the brief moment when time hovered hesitantly, all he saw was the terrible wheels of the Sharingan. But he heard. He _heard hope_.

"RASEN!"

* * *

Dramatic License plays cruel jokes on people, and one of that is when it delays time just a _little bit_ so that the ass-kicking (or soon to be ass-kicking) heroes always arrived one minute too late, preferably just in time to see a nasty big spike impale the hero's best friend or mentor. 

In Kumo's case, that had only been too true.

In Kumo's case, seeing something like Rasen's legs fold up underneath, and hearing an inhuman scream crash out of his lips, awoke that primeval Uchiha bastard in her.

She didn't even bother shouting words like, "BASTARD!" or "HOW DARE YOU!" (as if people like Akatsuki could be reprimanded like _that_) and went straight in for the kill.

Sasuke was also beside her, but howling through his mind was pure hatred. In the one moment where anger and hatred collided, the only two Uchiha survivors speared for the Uchiha traitor.

Neither turned their heads as Kisame and a third Akatsuki popped onto the road. Neither gave a damn when Kakashi shouted for them. They couldn't hear Sakura's shriek of horror as Itachi dropped Rasen and came straight for them. The black waves drowned out Gai's battle as he clashed with Kisame.

And then the Uchiha were face to face, all three, the three last in the entire world, inches apart from one another, yet separated by an appalling gulf of hatred, of lust for power, of vengeance.

The moment broke. Without her Sharingan Kumo hardly stood a chance against Itachi's Mangekyou Sharingan, and, blinded by rage, she failed to remember the rule of dealing with such a powerful weapon. Yet Sasuke ignored her as she dropped to her knees, eyes wide. He felt the cursed seal take over. The instant the second level of the seal washed completely over him, he knew that there had never been a return to Konoha. His heightened senses only had room for Itachi, and so he did nothing as the third Akatsuki slammed Sakura into a tree. Even if Naruto were killed in front of his face, he would have only glared at Itachi and hated him more.

"CHIDORI!"

The malicious black chakra that should have been an electrifying blue was easily dodged, but Sasuke was not done yet. With his other fist he slid the kunai into Itachi's cloak in a flash, faster than he had ever moved before, and jumped back as the Mangekyou's black fire roared in the air.

Suddenly he was thrown aside. A storm of kunais pierced the air where he hung. He landed on the rooftop of Rasen's hut as Kumo rolled to a halt. Shakily, she pushed herself up and gave Sasuke a look. "Uchihas are bastards, but at least Uchihas look out for one another," she snapped, "you could've told me about those creepy eyes of his, you know!"

Sasuke had no time to wonder how she recovered so fast as Itachi led the attack. Two years of training under Orochimaru kicked in, and Sasuke dodged entirely on instinct while forming handseals. "Grand Fireball Jutsu!"

Itachi had begun moving even before the fireball left Sasuke's lips, but as his feet stepped left, he froze.

The jutsu hit dead on.

As the bunshin popped into nonexistence, Sasuke spared a glance for Kumo, whose hands made odd motions in the air as shadows left the ground and scattered into the air. "He is mine," they both said at the same time. And, being Uchiha bastards for the moment, neither were very willing to back down.

But as is that case for all sensible shinobis, both quietly agreed that their differences could be settled later, and they proceeded to comb out Uchiha Itachi.

Abruptly Sasuke's speed heightened, and in that moment Kumo knew that the real Itachi was found.

* * *

In the woods, a long way off from the smoking earth where the grand fireball struck moments before, Gai clashed with Kisame, launching one powerful kick after another. 

A swing of Samehada sent both shinobis leaping five yards back. From their positions they regarded one another grimly. "I SHALL DEFEAT YOU!" cried Gai, eyes burning with the flame of youth, and charged at Kisame.

* * *

Sakura shook with the effort of concentration. It wasn't the chakra concentration that was hard, but rather concentrating on the Akatsuki. When your target kept blurring in your sight, you might as well labeled hitting that target "impossible." 

Kakashi stood poised before the Akatsuki, Sharingan revealed.

The Akatsuki blurred _again_. Sakura gathered chakra to her fist and punched the ground just something black and red dashed toward the copy-nin.

Instead of stumbling, however, the Akatsuki crossed right over the wide fissure and aimed for Kakashi's heart.

The chirping of a thousand birds, the roar of Raikiri, and everything fell silent.

* * *

Itachi swung his kunai, leaving a bloody gash across Sasuke's abdomen. Yet in his current state Sasuke could care less. "Itachi," he spoke, leaping away from the Akatsuki, "you have gotten weak." 

Beside him, Kumo muttered, "That's only 'cause we're ganging up on him." And she lunged also, jumping back as Itachi parried her blow easily. She refocused in time to see Itachi toss the kunai in Sasuke's direction. It exploded in midair.

Not even her prankster experiences helped. How come what happened in stories never worked here? If you were a prankster, then when you became a hero some sort of prankster's instinct ALWAYS saved your butt. In stories the hero ALWAYS had time for free-talk to point out just how villainous the villain was and why he should return to the ways of good so that everybody can live happily ever after.

_Well, that's reality for me_, thought Kumo, and then realized that in reality, ninjas didn't even have time to _think_ rambling thoughts.

Itachi's kunai went into her stomach and out. She barely felt it, for Sasuke had taken the opportunity and lunged for Itachi with Chidori crackling, and she herself was performing a double-seal simultaneous jutsu at furious speed.

Inwardly Kumo winced. She just _knew_ that Dramatic License would jovially make Sasuke miss Itachi and hit _her_. Possibly she will also miss and hit _Sasuke_, which would be thought of as being fair if Itachi wasn't sticking a kunai through her (and preparing for the Amaterasu) and both Sasuke and her were really aiming to hurt Itachi real bad. But she didn't revert completely into an Uchiha bastard for nothing.

With impossible speed (but proven possible now, thanks to Kumo), she delivered a punch into the air in quite a different direction than Itachi. Sasuke closed in. The air where she punched began to shimmer and _fade_. Itachi's hand twitched, suddenly seeming to sense something wrong. And amidst this all, once more in this battle, someone felt the world change into a color.

* * *

Gai heaved as he fought with the real Kisame. Too much of his chakra had been wasted on the clone, but in the business of shinobis it couldn't be helped that you had to get the clone before you fight the real thing. 

Nevertheless this was a rule that tended to kill people, and right now the chance of Gai meeting a Shinigami in the next hour was 'highly likely'. That is, until an orange, very fat cat dropped out of the clear blue sky.

It fixed Hoshigaki Kisame with a _look_. It somersaulted. It shifted through the air unlike any cat and rammed into the shocked Akatsuki.

With legendary reflex Kisame brought Samehada up and endeavored to rip the cat in half, but Gai was already lunging forward, and in his haste to save the cat missed an opportunity to punch Kisame in the face.

However, as Gai spun away and looked back, he saw Kisame lifted into the air, gurgling, hands clawing the air, Samehada lying in tiny little fragments all across the ground, and a horridly thin, pale, somewhat short young man holding the Akatsuki by his collar with one arm. The young man looked quite geeky, maybe because of his glasses and shiny black hair and the stately white suit with a nice blue pen clipped to the breastpocket.

He threw Kisame down, or, rather, seemed to have, because Kisame really sank into the ground like a rock in water and disappeared.

A minute later, the geeky looking man was taking the fat cat from Gai's arms, and Gai just realized that the man wore no headband, so he absolutely didn't have a single clue whom his rescuer was. Before he could blink, the geeky man was gone.

* * *

Sakura and Kakashi darted madly toward the Uchiha battle site. 

_Sasuke-kun, please be safe…_ Sakura thought worriedly. Her abilities as a medic were topnotch, but what if Sasuke was killed? Worse yet, what if Sasuke was once more mentally destabilized and decided to chase after Itachi? The memory of that night flashed before her face. The memory of when she was still a genin and she begged him to stay.

_And all he said was 'Thank you'_.

From even their distance, Sakura and Kakashi could clearly hear the snap in the air as though some god had just broke a gigantic glassware over the biggest rocks ever really, really loud. But all they really saw was a thin ribbon of red light streaming into the air. That was _never_ a good sign, for only extremely-highly concentrated chakras emitted such small amount of light and so much sound (the same theory as in lightning and thunder).

_

* * *

-! -! -! -! -! -!_ swore Kumo most un-Uchiha-like. At least Uchihas used real swear words. _Am I -! dead!_ was what she wondered, just before a -! of a wholebody-ache rammed into her nerves.

"Yeah, I might wish that I'm dead," she muttered, "but I'm not, so I will just heal, okay? Thank you very much, please remove that kunai now and stop staring at me." In her confusion, she didn't quite register that Itachi's eyes were closed, and his body slumped limply.

Gingerly, she tried moving her fingers. It didn't work. Rather, more pain seemed to be in order. _Oh -!_

* * *

From her far right came a moan. Sasuke pushed himself off the ground, reverted back to his normal, human look, and glanced around. Immediately his head spun, but when focus returned, he could just make out Kumo lying on the ground in an unhealthily twisted angle, under Itachi, whose whole body just looked _wrong_. And the whole earth around them dented in a HUGE crate. 

_What the hell was that jutus?_ Sasuke thought resentfully. Whatever Kumo did, it was certainly very effective. In fact, it was OVERLY effective.

A shadow fell over him. He glanced up, and gawked at the stately-dressed man who offered him a hand, politely. "Who the hell are you!" Sasuke growled. His throat felt parched, and perhaps a bit broken.

Without a word the man reached down and pulled him up, handing him over to someone…pink. And Sasuke vaguely registered Sakura's worried look and tear-filled eyes (plus a distant cry of "WHAT HAS HAPPENED HERE, KAKASHI MY ETERNAL RIVAL!") before he blacked out.

* * *

"A cumulative reaction, I think. It concentrates all the chakra currently expelled into the vicinity into a space the size of one millionth of an ant and releases it," explained the stately, geeky young man officially established as Jikiri Tou, to Kakashi and Gai, who sat dutifully waiting as Sakura hovered over the two unconscious Uchihas, Yodoniku Rasen, and the Kirigakure shinobi Suiken. Hiyari stood to the side, looking helpless. "Kumo-san's double-seal simultaneous jutsu is currently the only one in the world that can cause this. In fact, she invented the jutsu solely to achieve the effect." 

Kakashi maintained a thoughtful silence. "But wouldn't she die?"

"No. Otherwise she would have died all those times she tested out the jutsu. The purpose of the double-seal in syncopation is to achieve multiple, powerful effects at once using one stream of chakra. The second part of her jutsu diverted most of the blast to the surrounding."

Although the explanation had been thoroughly confusing, nobody really wanted to argue with a scientific-looking person, so Kakashi returned to his book.

* * *

Kumo groaned. At least the extra weight of Itachi wasn't on top of her anymore (and she suspected that this was also a convention by Dramatic License), but she still didn't feel good _at all_. 

_I'm gonna die_, she thought.

And then she saw Tou's face hover over hers, and she whimpered. _I'm REALLY gonna die._

TBC

* * *

Author's Note: 

I really enjoyed writing this chapter, especially toward the end. Inspiration just kept rolling in and I found that I couldn't truncate any of the fight scenes between the Uchihas, so I apologize if it got kinda long.

Anyways, Itachi's not dead, yes, so don't worry.

Next Chapter: Return to Konoha; Sasuke's decision, and Itachi on trial!


	10. Chapter 9

Whoosh! Another chapter! And this one's relatively short (like, half the length of the last chapter)…man!

I've got my finals and the SAT coming up, so I will probably not update as much as I used to. Wahh!

Read on!

* * *

Disclaimer: Kishimoto's awesome, yeah! And Naruto belongs to him and him ONLY! 

**

* * *

Chapter 9 Epilogue **

A wagon jilted along the road. It rose and crashed and swung side to side, rolling on without the slightest concern of exactly how many rocks its wheels have grated over and how many people are pulling it forward. So far, the blue birds that lazily alighted on the wagon found it amusing to watch the big fat cat drag the wagon with its tail.

Hiyari sat on the ledge, watching the way ahead, as Tou thumbed through a stack of paperwork, a frown on his face, and Sakura hunching over Sasuke, one hand on his arm, another denting Kumo, face, and said, very, very slowly, "Do. Not. Do. That."

"Warning taaaakkkkkkkkeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn," Kumo moaned as she slumped backward, colliding into Kakashi, who had his nose buried into _Icha Icha Violence_, or, you could say, _stuck_ to the book by a blotch of Iwagakure blackmarket superglue (with a complete warranty to prove that it _sticks_).

"Let. Go," Sasuke said, the Uchiha bastard ever present, and glared partially at Sakura, partially at Kumo, and mostly at Itachi.

The Uchiha Akatsuki stared blankly into space. He was obviously very angry about something, but nobody knew exactly what it was all about. There were eggs plastered to his fine black hair, unhealthy-looking quagmire mush stuck to his clothes, a branch of poison ivy wrapped around his throat, and two stretches of chains that looked awfully heavy wrapped _tight_ ALL over him. Smack dab in the middle of his forehead a piece of red jewel glittered. When Kakashi saw Tou glue it to the Uchiha's forehead, his face turned a humorous shade of red. In fact, when all males _and_ females present saw it (except Gai, of course, who has no sense of anatomy AT ALL), their faces went tomato red.

Yep, it had a rather suggestive shape that is almost, well, actually NEVER seen before in shinobi business. As it happens, Tou orders goods like this from the PBME and other associations of Kumogakure Underground _all the time_, and seems to care less that it resembled something distinctly…uncomfortable to the eye.

What is the function of the jewel? It simply stopped chakra from flowing into Itachi's eyes, which is the only reason why he hasn't yet ripped out Tou's throat for putting that ridiculous article on him and Amaterasu'ed the one who invented this stupid thing, whoever that is (who also happens to be closer than _anyone_ thinks, for she's slumping on Kakashi right now, rubbing her dented face.)

Rasen groaned as Kakashi shouldered Kumo off, and the ANBU Captain fell like a piece of paper onto him. Suiken, sullenly wrapped in bandages from head to toe, could only make little noises to demand for his thirst (which has been ignored for the past FIVE HOURS).

Yep. The Konoha shinobi returning from a glorious HLKIA mission were really happy. Fate just hate to let people like Rasen and Suiken die, because the hooded, creepy, floating, dead-looking boney old men hovering above the model of the world had _plans_.

Now if only they could drop a hint into Kakashi's head to un-stick his nose.

* * *

"Don't you think that this is kind of stupid?" asked Kumo, marching Itachi right through the Konoha gates. "I mean, nobody's even bothering with us!" 

"Really dobe?" scoffed Sasuke, who had really wanted to volunteer steering Itachi through until Kakashi nicely pointed out that Itachi, in his current…dysfunctional state…would probably get killed before he reaches the gate.

"Oh for goodness sakes!" Sakura glared at the two Uchihas (Sasuke and Kumo). "Stop acting like little kids! Shinobis shouldn't care about glorifications and, and, and make childish remarks like that," she finished lamely, not really wanting to offend Sasuke who, after all, is _still_ her crush.

"I'm not a shinobi," Kumo pointed out (and to the horror of general society, she spoke the dreaded words spoken by every female in movies where people tell them that "No man can cross this bridge" or "No man can survive these woods"…whereas the females just walk through and come out alright). Now, Kumo pointed out: "I'm a kunoichi."

Itachi twitched.

Sasuke glared. "You know you just used a really stupid pun, right?"

Kumo opened her mouth, and shut it as Gai struck a dramatic pose, teeth sparkling, and punched the air. "ALRIGHT! LAST TO THE HOKAGE TOWER IS A HARD BOILED EGG!" And he whirled away.

Slowly, Rasen turned to Kumo, his face going through a fast transition of shock to understanding to great confusion. "Is he always like this?"

"Always," replied Kumo.

Hiyari shuddered. "I want to be a shinobi, but I don't wanna be a shinobi like _him_."

"Neither would I…" mumbled Suiken, carried on Kakashi's back like a sack of jellybeans. "And if you would please be more gentle, thank you very much…" The spirit of grumpiness had descended upon the company, mainly because for the past two days Tou had been filling their heads with scientific mantras about quantum physics and the laws of gravity, whereas all his cat did was occasionally mistake Suiken for a very big, white rat. You can imagine that, yeah?

As one, the group faced the Hokage Tower, very slowly, and eventually Kotetsu and Izumo walked up, took one look at Uchiha Itachi in egg, mush, poison ivy, chains, the suggestive jewel, and decided not to say anything other than: "Errrrr…"

"Right!" grinned Kumo cheerfully, and gave Itachi one mighty shove.

The Konoha-Kumogakure team walked through the gates _just like that_.

* * *

"Errrrr…" said Naruto, blinking at Itachi, eyes fastened in frightful rigidity to the red jewel. 

After the YOU WHAT! echoes faded away, Kumo thumped Naruto on the head and stuffed a bill into his hands. "Buy yourself more ramen," she said, "and this is a dream." Then she shoved Itachi away from Ichiraku and joined the glowering Konoha shinobis.

Sasuke's glare, which had been on his face for the last sixteen hours, intensified. "I would have preferred it that you didn't tell HIM, of all people."

"I…don't see what's wrong with that," Sakura muttered, shooting worried glances from one Uchiha to another to another.

"It's against protocol," spoke Tou, "Konoha Shinobi Rules Volume 8, Chapter 45, page 3961, line 4: all captured nikunin must remain secret until approval by Hokage to release information. Punishment upon violation of procedure. For the rules of punishments, please see Konoha Shinobi Rules Volume 98, Chapter 72."

People stared. As one man (with woman implied), the Konoha shinobis thought, _How the hell did he learn about OUR rules!_

As one man (woman implied), the rest of the people (excluding the fat cat), thought, _I really don't like this guy, cause he might be the death of me. I just know it. When there's someone who sticks to the rules ALL THE TIME and isn't some humble, humorous guy, then I am dead meat._ Of course, Rasen merely thought, _This is the one part about Tou-kun that I DON'T miss._

Itachi just stared.

From the ramen stall, Naruto made attempts get up, but finally found that, after just _one_ bowl of ramen, he couldn't! _What the – _ And as his face transformed into a myriad of interesting colors, Sakura sighed.

Painfully, the Konoha-Kumogakure team and missingnin and cat and Tou and Rasen and Hiyari and Suiken slung over Kakashi's shoulder marched on.

* * *

Black Ryoki #3 glared murderously at the feudal lord of Thunder Country. In fact, the feudal lord would be in itty bitty pieces _everywhere_ by now if Reibane hadn't kindly taken away BR #3's weapons. 

"You can't help it," said Reibane, "the princess is getting married to Lord Onawa." _Ryoki-san and I have worked SOOOOOO hard for this!_

"But I fucking like her!" whined BR #3.

"Errr…there's a LOT of women in the world, you know." And Reibane added quickly, just in case, "a LOOOT of girls, too." _It doesn't look like THIS one's going to the Society of Misbegotten Lab Experiments…oh well._

"I don't give a damn," answered BR #3, not taking his eyes off the feudal lord who fidgeted nervously under the sheer tension in the room.

Sighing, Reibane put his arm around BR #3. "I'm really sorry about this," he said, "don't blame me. Blame Kumo-chan for cloning Ryoki." And he broke Black Ryoki #3's neck.

* * *

"I…umm…." Kumo welted under Tsunade's glare and the wrinkly look that two other pairs of eyes sent her. Plus there was a mummy man staring at her with one eye. The combined effects were quite scary, for even someone like Kumo. "Alright." 

"So it's agreed."

"So it is."

"Hai," Kakashi confirmed.

"You are dismissed, then."

"Hai," complied Kumo.

The wrinkled eyes deepened their stare.

"Errr…yes?"

"You can let go of the Uchiha now," Tsunade said, her tone unreadable.

"Well…" Kumo sweated. "You aren't going to kill him…right?"

Five minutes later, the door to the conference room opened, and Kakashi and Kumo were tossed out into the hall.

Sakura had taken Rasen, Hiyari, and Suiken to the hospital with the company of Jikiri Tou, which left Sasuke to glance up in irritation, sitting alone on the bench outside the conference room.

"Well?" Kumo gasped indignantly at the glaring Uchiha.

"It's not like there was anything else I could do! They are probably going to kill him!"

"Hn."

"Yeah."

"Not without a trial first," interjected Kakashi.

Sasuke sat in sullen silence. _Itachi will be executed, for sure._

He deserved it.

* * *

The door to the conference room opened. Four ANBU marched Itachi down the hall, and Shizune peeked out. "Sasuke-san?" 

Nodding, Sasuke stood up and entered.

Tsunade, the village elders, and another man were trenched heavily in conversation, yet as Sasuke entered, a quietness fell, and the Godaime's gaze returned to Sasuke. "I don't like wasting my time," she began, "so I will get straight to it. Uchiha Sasuke, Kakashi has reported of your use of Orochimaru's cursed seal during your fight with Uchiha Itachi. You disobeyed his direct command to act as a team and attacked Itachi on your own. In activating the cursed seal you also put your own teammates in the line of danger. Uchiha Sasuke – "

"Hai."

The Godaime leaned forward, eyes promising pain.

"Will you abandon Konoha once more?"

Sasuke looked, really looked into the Godaime's eyes, for the first time since he entered the room. _Will I abandon Konoha once more?_ It was a question that plagued his mind throughout the mission. But now, in this room, he was more ready than ever to answer.

"I will stay."

The elders nodded. The mummy-man gave him a calculating gaze, and Tsunade's face broke into a small smile. "No?"

"No," sighed Sasuke, "I won't abandon Konoha again."

_Because I am not alone._

"ARGH!"

The door crashed open, Kumo landed in a heap on the floor.

"Feh," Sasuke smirked at the look of utter rage on Tsunade's face, "dobe."

_Uchihas are bastards, but at least Uchihas look out for one another!_

"Hai." Sasuke murmured, "Uchihas look out for one another." He cleared his throat. "Tsunade-sama, I have a request…"

* * *

A shadow snuck into the Hokage tower. It wheedled up the stairs and engaged its way into the Godaime's office, where the Hokage, one elbow on the table, drowned down another round of alcohol. 

Her eyes snapped open at the shadow's approach. One fist tightened. "Nani? Kumo, don't you have somewhere else that you could be at? My office is not the place for pranks."

Sheepishly, the shadow detached itself from the wall, and Uchiha Shingen Kumo scratched her head as a grin found its way to her face. "Ah, Godaime-sama."

Tsunade's eyes snapped open. Kumo almost never address people by "sama" or the like…_unless she wants something…_

A knock sounded on the door.

"Enter."

Uchiha Sasuke walked hesitantly into the room, halting as his eyes landed on Kumo. "Dobe?"

"Oy…"

For a moment the two Uchihas stared at one another. "You first," said Kumo.

"Tch," Sasuke snorted, stepping back to indicate that he would rather talk after her.

Tsunade massaged her forehead. "You two. Just TALK."

Another exchange of stares, and then Kumo spoke up. "Can you pardon Uchiha Itachi?"

"WHAT!" screamed two voices in the room.

Sasuke glared sourly at Kumo. "What the hell!"

Sighing, Tsunade put down her sake bottle. "Sasuke asked me the same thing this morning." She gave both a look. "Why?"

"He's…one of the three last Uchiha…errrggghh…it might feel a bit lonely without him, ya know," Kumo conceded sheepishly. And then…"AHA!" Kumo shouted, pointing a finger at the reddening Sasuke. "So you asked her, too…eh! And why are you so against it when I ask her! Maybe she'd agree, huh?"

"I won't," Tsunade dropped the words stonily.

The two Uchihas gulped.

The Godaime sighed. "You should understand. Itachi is an S-class criminal, an Akatsuki. He MASSACRED the entire Uchiha clan. He has killed countless others. Would anyone pardon him? Even if I do, the ninja world will heave into an uproar. There is no way that Uchiha Itachi can stay in Konoha as a civilian, even under house arrest. He is too dangerous for that."

A third exchange of glances, and Kumo leaned forward. "What if…Godaime-sama…what if I have a proposal that you can not refuse?"

* * *

It was odd, to say the least. 

The villagers stopped whatever they were doing as a procession of Kumogakure shinobis marched through the Konoha gates. In the lead, Uchiha Shingen Kumo shot grins _everywhere_.

Never in the villagers' lives (except during the war), did they see such a huge procession of Thunder Country shinobis traveling leisurely into Hidden Leaf. And here they were.

But not all of them were shinobis. Trailing near the rear were an immense retinue of cloaked figures wearing colorful badges that said things like BIAS and PBME and The Society of Wine Craft (which, by the by, carried over thirty crates of heavy liquor toward the Hokage Tower).

Also with the procession was the Raikage, who, rather donning the tradition, somber costume of all kages, dressed up in normal shinobi attires with a fat cat perched on his shoulder (which, as some closer standbys observed, seemed to be depressing his shoulder at a great angle).

Approximately seven hours later, a group of Konoha shinobis took off toward Kumogakure, along with some willing entrepreneurs and a few beggars and muggers and eavesdroppers and nearly Naruto (who really wanted to join the PBME if Sakura didn't punch his head into his neck).

And, in a lonesome little spot on Konoha street left empty by the previous enterprise, Rasen stood pondering with Hiyari and Suiken by his side. At a holler down the streets he turned his head and waved toward Kumo. The Uchiha had at her hands another Uchiha, the infamous missing nin Itachi.

"Well…" Rasen said conversationally, "do you think this spot is good?"

"I will be the best," said Hiyari and Kumo confidently at the same time.

"With a waiter, of course," murmured Rasen, shooting an amused glance toward Uchiha Itachi, whose eyes twitched madly as the sense of wrongness pervaded his mind.

Suiken circled the Uchiha warily, eyeing him up and down. "Definitely waiter material," he said, "my uncle ran one of the biggest restaurants in Kirigakure, I would know. Shinobis make excellent waiters when you train them to do so."

With a laugh Rasen ruffled Suiken's hair. "Then I guess you are in charge of that."

"And I will be the Chair of Finances, of course!" said Kumo enthusiastically.

"I will help at the kitchen," Hiyari spoke, glaring at Kumo.

"Ahh..." Rasen nodded, smiling.

END

* * *

Author's Note: 

Wwheeee! "From Thunder to Leaf" is finished! And, if you really want to know, there will probably be a sequel, since there are some ends in here that I haven't wrapped up yet.

Any questions? Sorry I had to torture Itachi with all those..urr…accessories.

See ya!

Raofee


End file.
